


Chasing Stardust

by spacemachine



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-08-13 10:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20172442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemachine/pseuds/spacemachine
Summary: According to the stories of old, Morgoth destroyed the world of Arda and the Valar remade their home among the stars, colonizing the galaxy from one end to the other. Mairon dreamed of adventure in the skies—anything that would get him off of the shapeless rock of a planet that he called home. He didn't plan to end up a prisoner on Morgoth's ship. As memories resurface and he grows in strength, he begins to realize that not everything the Valar say may be as it seems.In the end, the truth lies in the dark halls of the Void, in the hands of the evil god who pilots it and the ancient war he wages. Dagor Dagorath didn't end with just one world.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This AU project has been ongoing for a few years, and will be updated weekly-biweekly depending on how much time I have to edit and rewrite these documents.
> 
> I would like to leave a short disclaimer that this is a work of science fiction, with an emphasis on fiction. Do not expect depictions of space or technology to be true to life. I write this AU for fun, so I will not always be perfectly accurate with my timeline, naming systems, languages, and so forth as I attempt to move the story along. I apologize for any inaccuracies and hope you enjoy the story in spite of this.

“_Are you sure you’ll be okay up there?_”

The comm lines buzzed with feedback, and that was the only indication Mairon had that they broke hyperspace. In an S-class carrier like this one, there were no nauseating lurches or sudden gravity shifts that had him reaching for handles and walls. The fourth-gen Multimatter engines were the closest to the old antimatter tech their scientists had engineered since the signal blackout, or so he was told. There were no ships surviving that could tell him if this was true.

“Curumo,” he reassured for what was probably the fourth time since their conversation started, “I’ll be fine. Just cover for me until Aulë gets my holo.”

“_Yeah, but_…” Curumo was always the more reserved one in the forge. Mairon was a planner; had he forgotten that? “_The T35-Sulimo is scheduled to cut right through dark space._”

“And it’ll pop right out on the other side,” he deadpanned. Brown eyes bled unwittingly into gold as he focused on soldering the new alarm wire, steady hands managing the board with a practiced finesse borne from all those late nights spent studying the books and exercising everything he learned there. “Trust me. We haven’t lost a single ship in dark space in ages. ‘Sides,” he couldn’t help but smirk to himself, “I’ve seen every blueprint of this thing. I’m an all-purpose mechanic. I know where all the escape pods are.”

There was nothing but faint static for a time on the other end, and Mairon began to wonder if getting closer and closer to dark space meant that the signal was about to go bad. That was his job this week, too…with hundreds of thousands of the tiny, shining signal accelerators dumped in between his new crew, they were told to _sort and report_. And then they were to replace _every single one_ on this massive, new carrier. Even state-of-the-art spacecraft like the Sulimo was bound to have recalls sometimes.

Curumo finally spoke after plenty of deliberation, his voice laden with enough emotion for the both of them. “_…Please be careful. Don’t get caught._”

Mairon tilted his head haughtily before he remembered that his watch was set only to comm mode. “What will could they do to me anyway?” he challenged proudly. “We’ll be _lightyears_ from home. Sending me back would be damn expensive.”

A door opened and he whispered a quick _gotta go_ before turning pointedly back to the alarm panel to close it up. The panel sealed back perfectly, seamlessly. He turned around in time to salute the passing pilot—his blue lapels indicated his value as a _squad captain_ which made Mairon grossly outranked in this place. Not for long, he thought; he snuck into the mechanics’ crew so surely he could eventually sneak his way into pilot school. Only if this carrier could let him off on New Valinor first, and then maybe he could prove to Aulë that he was serious about following his dreams…

He wasn’t sure what inspired him to leave the forges. Call it an excess of ambition. He’d spent so long on that seasonless rock of a planet, examining ores and crafting the tiniest, most sensitive parts of larger mechanisms—to someone _else’s _design, to someone _else’s_ request. He was a scrapper and recycler in a yard with little other purpose, and as by the eve he snuck away precious metals to craft rings that glowed with an unnatural light, he pored over books of schematics that felt _too_ familiar…he knew there was so much more he could do.

So he left. He left the forges and snuck on a ship and decided he was headed for _anywhere but here_. He landed himself a job on a secondary mechanic crew, the kind where no one asked questions and the pay wasn’t particularly great. But it felt like freedom, and Mairon needed that freedom now.

Then came the Sulimo. It would make its maiden voyage across Dark Space to get to New Aman and, with its skeleton crew, it would dock there in New Valinor. The same New Valinor that held the flight academy—and, Mairon reasoned, it would be easier to convince Aulë to let him stay once he arrived. It wasn’t like he was important, or powerful, or _special_ in any way. The scrap yard wouldn’t even miss him.

Maybe it was dumb luck that the signal chips were recalled mere days before the launch. It was an opportunity to not only put him on the ship but to put him _all over_ it, let him explore it. There was something spiritual about engineering at such a scale. There was a magic to it, some kind of hidden art that he was looking to discover.

Most importantly, it was better than the countless days spent over the forges. It finally felt like he was _making_ something out of himself, and somehow this place he was in felt _right_ with his life. Freedom.

The four central comm chips in the room that powered the security network for the doors were all behind a massive wall panel. To get inside, as he’d been instructed, he took out that little _T-_shaped tool and inserted it into the honeycomb mesh. A little pull and a seamless chunk of the wall mechanicals came loose, revealing the wall behind it. This was why he’d been chosen for the _sulimo_; he was tall, but he was narrow enough to squeeze into the tight space between the walls. His arms were strong from working the forge, but he wasn’t bulky like the retired fighters who came in looking for quiet work. No, he was _just right_ for the job. Like fate.

The panel slid shut behind him and he was left in the half-light of the machinery. Powering on the smaller of his two battery-powered torches, he balanced it in his teeth to work with his hands free. They always warned him in training of working in these small spaces, where a short could lead to a very fleshy fire. Complete with infographics and scare tactics, of course. Always keep the hands free and work _delicately_. Be aware, be organized.

He had switched two of the four chips by the time he heard the automatic doors at the end of the corridor slide open. Quick breaths, quick feet.

“_Whatever it is, it’s gaining fast_,” a hurried voice said from somewhere beyond the wall and Mairon’s soldering iron stilled. “_I don’t—someone needs to alert High Command—_”

The door on the other end of the corridor slid shut and Mairon felt something settle in the pit of his stomach. _Gaining fast_, his head repeated. _Whatever it is_.

He popped the hatch on top of the wall panel and slid himself over to the sunken-in coppery ladder beside it. There would be three more units above the door so he’d be going into the mechanism floor above it. When he climbed his way up a few rungs and slid the roof panel open he immediately noticed the rush of warm air and the coppery tinge of light above him. He eased himself up into the gap there; above, it was high enough to stand and the panels were all painted the deep burgundy of the heat-traps. This, he realized, was an auxiliary engine room up above him—and luckily it sat empty right now, no prying eyes at his orange mechanic’s jumpsuit. He painted a comical figure against the lighting, copper hair against copper lights and recognizable citrus orange. General purpose mechanics certainly knew how to stand out.

He turned back to where he knew the corridor was directly beneath him and walked on lightweight boots to the far panel. It stood out, its handles raised and silver against the rest of the paneled floor. Behind him loomed the side of an auxiliary engine that did who-knows-what, pistons lightly pumping with a familiar hum and clank that he hadn’t noticed before through all the soundproofing of the main cabin. All he had to do was pop it open with his wrench and solder in the last two sensors.

He never made it to the panel.

He was lucky enough to be near a grav-lock when the ship gave a great lurch. He scrambled for the handle and held on before it could throw him into the wall, letting out an indistinct cry as the force pulled his shoulder hard enough to rebound with a snap. The emergency lights started flashing as the auxiliary engine squealed in protest at the force. Then the pull relaxed and the gravity stabilizers kicked back in; and he was back on his feet, panting with his arm screaming in pain. The engine clicked loudly once, then the second time felt more like a _bang_—and then everything went dark.

He was scrambling for his torch on his belt when the auxiliary lights kicked in. The motor beside him was eerily silent. From somewhere below, he recognized indistinct shouting.

He started moving again when he noticed smoke wafting out from the engine. He didn’t want to be there to inhale whatever toxins came out of that thing, he reasoned, and so he slid back through the wall panel from before. The top of the panel was lost, thrown somewhere off to the side of the room, and he didn’t really care to retrieve it. Something _serious_ was obviously happening. _He needed to figure out what was going on._

He reached over to flip a switch on his comm, the light on his wrist shifting to the COMM_LOCAL_PRIVATE channel. He practically spat out his identifier code when the security module prompted him; and then the screen flashed green as it set him up in the private channel.

“Boss?” he called distinctly, setting the system to broadcast. “The hell is going on?”

For a minute as he fussed with the door the comms were completely silent, but then the voice of one of the other programmers came in.

“_Shit—is there anyone there?_”

“Me,” Mairon answered, maybe a bit too quickly. “I’m—I’m here. What just happened? There’s no power.” He slid the panel open and came out into an empty hall. Auxiliary power had forced open all of the automatic doors, fortunately enough for him; but the main power was, indeed, fully shut down. A low rumble began underfoot which he recognized as the fans of the backup life support system.

Finally, the voice on the other side answered, his outer rim brogue cutting through hazily on the comm static. The main network couldn’t carry the signal. Too bad for all of the electronics he just replaced, he thought to himself.

“_I think there’s been some sort of explosion,_” he explained. “_Wait—shit, someone’s here—”_

“Who’s there?” he asked as he began down the corridor. “Where are you?”

“_I’m in the—wait, no—_”

The comm line cut suddenly, the signal going dark and the screen on his wrist flashed red. He was alone on the channel.

Some wise sense of self-preservation had him reaching for his wrench and holding it aloft like the closest he could get to a real weapon. He wasn’t stupid enough to wander the halls without one in this case, here in the dark…not like he’d know what to do if he _saw_ anything even remotely dangerous. The halls thus far were dark, and he relied on his memory of the blueprints to get around. He’d studied the Sulimo a _lot_ in order to make it look like he knew anything about its mechanisms, design schemas pinched from Aulë’s library to hopelessly follow a dream.

Now, though, he was…frankly, terrified. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The stories about Dark Space were practically a _joke_—it was just as likely they’d be gunned down by some idiot gone rogue in Noldorin space. And the Sulimo was no joke—it could take a few blows.

This wasn’t supposed to happen because the rumors about Dark Space were just that—stories. _Rumors_.

Maybe it was just a standard engine failure, he defended to himself. Maybe it was nothing. A clatter at the end of the darkened room he found himself in got his attention. He’d wandered into a maintenance hall, the panels lining the sides of the room dark. And at the end, where he pointed his torch—a panel kicked open and a single hand desperately reached out.

“Don’t shoot!” he called. “’M not—_shit_—” A leg appeared after the hand and then the figure appeared to be stuck, the fastenings of his boot catching on the edges of the panel. He didn’t recognize any orange jumpsuit that denoted a mechanic who would be down there—just dirty, greasy clothes…

“You’re a stowaway,” he realized and accused all at once, though the grip he had on his wrench relaxed.

“Depending on whether or not you’re planning on throwing me off the ship, I’d accuse you of lying,” he replied clearly from the other side of the room. He was sliding himself out through the panel now, having untangled himself. He had a crisp, clean voice—and Mairon figured he was from New Aman or maybe one of the other core planets by his inflection. A stowaway, headed to New Valinor—_not much unlike you_, his mind reasoned for him.

Could be an ally depending on what happens. Mairon had to tread carefully.

“I’m a friend,” he maintained. “It sounds like neither of us are supposed to be here.”

Mairon had approached him by the time he pulled his head out from the panel. Copper hair gleamed bright in the artificial light of his torch, his grease-stained face doing little to hide elegant features. He knew immediately this one was elvish—and with most of the elves keeping to themselves on their respective homeworlds or serving high in their highly organized fleets, he wasn’t sure what a stowaway was doing on board. Unless he was some kind of outlaw from the last great war—but that was many years ago, and many years before Mairon’s time, and he couldn’t see why any fugitives would be left from that age.

The elf pulled himself up to his full height—and _goodness, he was tall_, Mairon thought, simply towering over him—and he looked down at Mairon warily.

“If this is what I think this is then we’re better off friends than enemies,” he reasoned, holding out his hand in greeting. Instead of taking it Mairon unhooked his other wrench and pressed it into his hand.

“So be it,” he agreed with the copper-headed stranger. “What’s your name?”

The elf leered sharply at him. “Lesson one, kid,” he instructed as he brushed past him and in the direction of the door. “Don’t give out your name. That’s a bad move out in Dark Space.”

He recoiled a little, following carefully in his steps. “…Okay,” he conceded. “And where—exactly are we going?” He clearly had a direction in mind, the way he wove through the darkened halls without even need of a torch.

“We’re going to get off this wreck before Morgoth decides it’s no use to him,” he answered.

Mairon’s stomach dropped. “You said _Morgoth_,” he repeated. “Like. _The_ Morgoth.”

Mairon recoiled as the wall ahead of them blasted out, the panels scattering as the floor shuddered with the force of the blow. He twisted on his knee and fell hard, the solid metal floor jarring painfully against his hips. But already the tall elf was dragging him to his feet, _hard_—pulling him back the other way and getting him blindly running. He heard him curse in a hard string of Khuzdul—an outer rim language, he thought in passing, but soon they were hurrying into a cramped corridor where dim emergency lights barely lit their passing. Mairon no longer had that familiarity with his surroundings; these were not maintenance halls. He didn’t see them in his trips into the upper levels of the ship.

“I don’t think they spotted us,” the elf noted as he peered around a corner, finally stopping to let Mairon catch his breath.

“_Who_?” He tried again. _When will anyone tell me what’s going on in—_

“_Morgoth_,” the elf spat again, running a hand through his red hair. It fell like curtains of fire over his shoulders, visibly bristling. “The enemy of the _fucking_ galaxy. His stupid thrall. I should have known he would be interested in a ship with _that_ name.”

“What? That’s not—” The elf stopped him then, pushing him close to the wall with his arm while he made a gesture for quiet with the other. The smell of smoke fell into his nose, an acrid and horrible thing, and footsteps, distant voices—

_Little shit’s on the ship somewhere. Find him or the boss’ll find you._

The voices were staticky, like they were coming from voice recorders. Which made more sense when a heavily armored shadow passed before the bend in the corridor, quickly retreating after it seemed to confirm there was no one there.

The redheaded elf withdrew his arm then and Mairon breathed in deeply, feeling some of the tension leave.

“We need to go,” the elf whispered to him, pointing down the hall. They both turned, Mairon favoring his unbruised side.

“_Hello, Copper-top_.”

The voice was clean and feminine; Mairon turned around first and his eyes met immediately with the barrel of a gun.

He’d never seen a gun before, not this far up close. Blasters like this were uncommon, because destructive potential and ships did not mix—this was for security fleets, for armies and fighters. He’d made knives, swords, shields, all sorts of tools—but never had he touched the art of crafting ranged weaponry. That didn’t, however, mean he wasn’t aware of what they were capable of.

“Hands where I can see them.”

He obeyed quickly, and he could hear the wrench in the elf’s hand drop behind him as more masked soldiers filed in behind the woman who was obviously their commander. She looked young, and stood maybe to his shoulder, but if her gnarled ears and distinct markings told him anything it was that she was orcish and her powerful armored stance told him she was _dangerous_.

The soldiers behind her raised their blasters, each piece of shining silver more terrifying than the last. One of those could rip clean through a person.

“Which one of you is Maedhros?” she asked, but her question sounded more like an order.

“If you want to live then don’t tell her anything,” the elf mumbled next to him. Mairon didn’t have a problem with keeping quiet, and the orc woman seemed more interested in questioning them.

“Boss,” said another soldier through his muffled mask behind her, “I don’t think they’re going to talk.”

She swore in some heavy, darker language. “Cuff them both, then,” she decided. “Only so many red-haired stowaways can be hiding on one ship.”

Two of her officers came from behind her and Mairon found himself being pinned rather roughly against the wall. The force of the push rattled his jaw as they wrenched his arms back and bound him in cold steel cuffs.

“Remember,” the elf reminded from beside him. Mairon could hear his cuffs clicking roughly shut. “Not a word.”

He was pulled away just as roughly. An orc behind him chuckled as he struggled to regain his footing.

“If I had the choice,” suggested the orc to the boss’s immediate right, “I’d gut them alive right here. Serve those orcslayers right.”

“The big guy wants the redheads,” she reminded firmly. “And he wants them _intact_. Unless you want to be on the receiving end of his wrath.”

“Gotcha,” obeyed the orc. The one behind him hAulëd him back up in a steel cold grip, pushing him ahead as the group began to walk to…whatever horrible fate they were being taken to.

The orcs joked the whole time up. They pulled his hair, grunted awful things in a language he couldn’t quite understand but his mind supplied as horribly derogatory. How did he know this?

Just as he recognized other choice words that they uttered into comm radios. It was like listening to himself. Like a voice in the back of his mind that he’d been ignoring for years.

“They’re taking us to a ship,” Mairon supplied quietly to his companion under their captors’ noise and chaos. “They think we’re important.”

“Well, shit,” mumbled the elf followed by a string of Khuzdul. He doubted any of his choice words were any friendlier.

The orc nearest to them laughed through his breathing mask and responded in rough, barked strings of the same language. The elf’s eyes widened but he looked away, as if to look anywhere but at the orc who’d understood his insults the entire time.

They were marched to an open chamber in the cargo bay. Mairon realized they were to be boarding a ship. He also realized in the dim light that the wet ground underfoot was probably not water—but he wouldn’t let himself look hard enough at his surroundings to notice more than the stench of burning and death.

When he’d escaped the forges in search of adventure, this wasn’t what he had in mind.

The bay door opened to whatever cargo atrocity they had docked on the Sulimo, leaking acrid orange light into the dark room. It stung Mairon’s eyes, intense after a dimly lit journey down unpleasant broken halls.

“You got ‘em, boss?” shrieked a shrill she-orc from the steel dock of a far older ship. Older than anything Mairon had ever ridden, he thought, the kind of aged thing they got occasionally for scrap. Transport class sparrows like these went out of production at least fifty Valarin fiscal years ago; he reconized the model by the tape of faded yellow paint down the right side of the heavily vented loading dock. They weren’t very useful, but they were fast for transporters; the sparrow-class ships had been decommissioned because pirates had taken to filching them and upgrading them with stealth cloaking. He remembered pulling one of those exact cloaking panels off of the entryway of a scrapper years ago.

_ The chipped parts give it character_, Curumo had joked as he hoisted his laser cutter over his shoulder. The fading light painted them a darker orange than daylight, like the candles from some vague memory that he couldn’t quite place. _Want to give a whirl? You’ve been flying the simulators, right?_

The contrast as he was roughly shoved onto the ship’s docking platform reminded him of just how far from home he had gone. Aulë wouldn’t be able to help him here. No one would.

Mairon had thought he knew being alone, once. But he had never known it quite like this.

They ushered them in as they chattered in their orcish language. An uruk awaited them in the chamber that they used for transport, looking all too dangerous even without weapons. He pointed to the wall, and Mairon would have obliged even before he noticed the long knives that actually were strapped to the side of his firm vest; even more so at the battle-worn scars upon his face. This was clearly their muscle.

_ Transport_, they said a few times. _Contact_. He caught other vague words in their conversation. Perhaps in the past he had taken the time to study the orcish tongues. Just because he couldn’t recall doing it didn’t mean he hadn’t. The Signal Blackout represented a lot to the Maiar—lost memories, lost homes, lost friends and family.

“Any idea what they’re saying?” mumbled his elvish companion as they hunched close to the corner, hearing the whir of engines and the radio static of shouting orcs. Soon following in was bundle upon bundle of goods; medical kits, uniforms, food. It seemed the pirates were happy to raid whatever they could from the ship.

No other prisoners. That was either a good thing or a bad thing.

He listened closely for the both of them, trying to understand what was being said. _Village. Money. Transport. Hunt. Copper. King. Hurry._

The words came through in a blur, a jumble of language and unknowns. It was like listening to something he could understand but in a very peculiar dialect.

Mairon looked over his shoulder and the elf seemed grave. Even so, his eyes worked with a thousand thoughts, the intelligence and drive in them clear. He behaved like it wasn’t the first time he’d been captured.

“To Morgoth, then,” he realized for the both of them. “I’d suggest you listen to whatever they tell you when you get in there. If you’re useful enough they’ll let you live.”

Morgoth was a bedtime story, a whisper of horrors untold, a tale of loss. They left their home world because of Morgoth.

He knew they were taking off when the lights further dimmed to an eerie green glow, the ship giving a great lurch before he had a momentary sense of weightlessness. Then they were drifting smoothly through space to heavens knew where.

From the back windows into the closed airlock, he could see the shadow of the Sulimo against the lights of several sparrow class transporters like this one; and then they left the fleet behind and jumped into warp. He worked his jaw as the air pressure changed around them. Smaller ships never lasted particularly long in warp before the life support started running low. He wondered if they were just going to let the two of them run out of air out here, just die adrift in space, as the Uruk watching them lowered his breathing mask onto his face.

The ship gave another great lurch, sending him slamming into the wall with enough force to jar his shoulder. He fought back a whimper as he regained his footing, pain registering in a distinct wave that spread from his shoulder down his arm and even into his collarbone and ribcage. The elf had been better prepared, his feet braced against the ground. He wondered how much time he had spent on ships like these. Probably too much, by the greasy clothes and the angry eyes.

His head cleared as the bay repressurized, and he caught a glimpse out the window to notice dark steel glittering in the half-light of some distant star. It was smooth and horrible and the precursor to something massive that they had sailed in upon.

It was massive, and as they drifted along its hull he noticed the large extruded writing bearing the distinct curl of ancient script. _The Void_, it read menacingly.

He knew all of the protocol landing requests different groups used among the stars. He had pored hungrily over manuals, memorizing vocabulary standards for each group ranging from dwarves to gray-elves and everything in between. These call signs, however, were foreign and unrecognizable to him.

“We’re a long way into dark space,” he whispered to the elf. He thought of the tall fellow as his only ally now.

“No shit,” the elf mumbled. His expression was grave. “Just do what they say, kid. Do what they say and they’ll let you live a bit longer.”

Mairon had never spared death much thought. Even now, it was not his looming demise that he thought about. It was the great curving crest above the docking platform that they slowly approached, and its vague familiarity that had him rapt with attention.

It was a strange feeling that he somehow knew what was to come for them. It was almost like, in another life, he had lived it before.


	2. 1

_ “What do you think?”_

_ Mairon hid his feelings with a grimace but he couldn’t help the warmth bubbling up in his chest as he beheld the grand hall, the fires, the vaulted stone.  
_

_ “A waste of time and precious resources,” he criticized blandly. But the twinkle in his eye could not be missed._

_ “I told you I would create for you a finer forge than Aulë could ever offer.” A cool hand settled on his shoulder._

_ He laughed. It was like a chime that pierced the stone itself. “You haven’t the first idea what a forge is,” he teased._

Act I

_ Thud.  
_

_ Thud._

_ Plink._

There was a leak in the pipes. He heard it every time they knocked vaguely against the ancient steel bars of the cell, and every time a drop of steaming water fell from the pipe to the ground roughly three feet from the door of their neighboring cell. _If they had any neighbors_.

His elvish ally had taken to commandeering his own corner of the cage, sitting there with his knees pulled up before him in a position of almost nonchalance. Maedhros was his name, he knew now—a strange combination of ancient Sindarin and even older elvish tongues. The elves all had names from thousands of years ago, names that they took in lives long past. Like Mairon’s own name—which, he assumed, was some kind of ancient god-tongue like the name of his master. Not that there were many left to remember it. The Valar held their secrets close, and everyone else got scraps of a story to piece together from the lives they once lived.

The eeriest thing about Maedhros was how little he seemed to care about their situation. It was as if he had done it before—many times, perhaps, by the short and pointed advice he gave Mairon through the journey. And now they were looking for him again, for some reason unknown.

“You keep speaking in Khuzdul,” Mairon brought up conversationally. “Are you from the outer rim?” They were alone in these awful, damp halls, just them and the hissing and knocking pipes. He wondered if they locked people up down here in an effort to drive them insane. The noise was overwhelming him already, setting him on edge and giving him the urge to talk just to take his mind off of it.

“I’ve spent the greater half of the past age among the dwarves,” he dismissed. “Best place to avoid being found. Unless you want to be. Good place to endure the Blackout.”

“Sounds like you spend a lot of time on the run, stowing away on transport ships,” he remarked.

Maedhros levelled a harsh glare at him. His eyes were piercing and betrayed more than his informal speech ever would.

“Don’t take me for a petty criminal,” he chided evenly. “And what about you, kid? I’m very, _very _old—so I’m not stupid. What’s one of Aulë’s maiar doing so far away from his master? Felt like getting a taste of freedom?”

“Just a little side work,” he said flatly.

“Aulë doesn’t contract his maiar out for _general purpose mechanics_,” Maedhros continued, levelling a glare at his dirty jumpsuit. “Thought the lot of you were all about lives of glamor, you know—crafting finery for your rich friends and the lot. Foppish.”

“The Maiar aren’t a hive mind,” Mairon defended.

They fell silent as the door at the end of the hall slid open. The thud of boots, the drag of a body half-across the floor—and then a shapeless figure was tossed rather roughly into the cell next to theirs, the one with the hot water dripping onto the floor. The faceless prisoner made a feeble attempt to scramble away from the drip of water and came to rest somewhere in the shadows at the far end of the cell, moving no more.

“Better him than us,” Maedhros remarked.

“What do they plan to do with us?” Mairon asked, trying to hide the quake in his voice. He couldn’t say he had a real stomach for torture—he'd seen the scars on the backs of some of the fiery maiar and knew they echoed of wars from a very, very long time ago. But that was the most he’d heard of such times.

If this were really Morgoth’s ship as it seemed to be, though—maybe those barbaric practices weren’t so unfamiliar here.

Maedhros did little to assail his nerves with a noncommittal shrug. “Can’t say what they’ll do to you,” he remarked. “Lots of former maiar of Aulë on this ship. Maybe they’ll ask you to join them. Maybe they’ll kill you.” Mairon’s stomach dropped. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

“And what about you?” he wondered. He tried not to show that he was visibly worried about these claims. He didn’t want this elf, who seemed so hardened and undeniably dangerous, to see him as he really was—no maia on a quest, but just a young servant who decided to try something new after tiring of a life where the most exciting part of the day was building mechanical parts—by _someone else’s design._

“Morgoth knows who I am,” Maedhros admitted with a half-smirk. His expression was not as haughty as intended, but instead seemed distinctly fatalistic. “And he knows I’ve outgrown his brand of torture. Likely he’ll hope to make a deal with my brothers, idiots that they are. I’m an expensive hostage.” He grinned like it was an achievement to be had.

Mairon nudged at the food they had been brought earlier, the tasteless protein rations in their outdated waxy wrappings. Careful to avoid the water leak, Mairon pushed what was left of his through the bars. Whoever it was in there would likely need it when he woke up.

“I don’t see any other prisoners down here,” he remarked. He tried to peer through the shadows at their new neighbor, but couldn’t make out much more than his large, loose hood.

“Take that as bad news,” advised Maedhros. “What do you think happens to all the ships he captures?”

He turned back to level a harsh stare at the elf. “I didn’t think this place was even _real_ until we were on it!” he defended. “All of this—it's just _legends_. Morgoth was defeated once again during the signal blackout. When the valar destroyed all of the antimatter engines, he retreated so far into space that he was never seen again. That’s what I was told. This—shouldn't _exist_.”

“What, does Aulë like to tell bedtime stories to the young maiar now?” Maedhros shot back. He rose from his spot on the floor to tower over Mairon in their close confines, and he was reminded again that this was a very, very old elf. All of the old ones had this air about them, always a mix of tangible fire and weathered stone. “No one defeats Morgoth that easily. Not my family, not even the valar—they just buy themselves time.” He levelled a glare at their limp neighbor, as if his piercing eyes were trying to discern an identity from the shapeless heap of cloth and limbs. “You don’t get it. Look—I know the inner systems don’t have to worry about things like the old war. They’d rather turn their heads away and pretend Morgoth isn’t poisoning the outer rim planets one by one. They like to pretend they have things under control. You’ll see him and you’ll realize that everything they told you was a lie.”

The doors slid open again. Maedhros backed up. The prisoner in the next cell curled in on himself at the sound. Mairon caught a glimpse of dirty brown boots.

There were uruks for them now, looking dangerous enough even if they hadn’t had heavy, impressive blasters in their hands. Before them, a pale-haired maia drifted in on light feet, her dark robes barely trailing the ground behind her. She didn’t even spare them a glance as she unlocked both of the cages with an indistinct word of power—and Mairon had wished he could have heard it. He hadn’t the power of his brethren to infuse their will into physical things like locks, but it would have at least given them a chance.

“You will come,” she ordered, the words falling off a tongue that seemed unsuited for them. In the cell next door, uruks were hauling the unconscious prisoner to his feet again. “Or we will drag you.”

His eyes followed her retreating footsteps with disgust. She had barely endeavored to look at them—which was perhaps a blessing, as had she looked up she may have recognized Mairon for what he was. But something about it didn’t sit right. He’d heard that there were many maiar who betrayed their masters for Morgoth’s service. It was more difficult seeing it in person.

Even more frustrating that he recognized her immediately as one of Irmo’s. How he knew, he couldn’t say—but maybe they had met once. Now she was a traitor.

Was that what they expected him to become? A traitor?

“You’ve got feet,” Maedhros prompted from behind him and he realized he was blocking the door. “_Walk _before the nice uruks decide that we took too long.”

“Wouldn’t call them _nice_,” Mairon said as he withered beneath one of their heavy glares. They’d have him overpowered in mere seconds.

There was something oddly familiar about them, too, that he couldn’t place. It sat in the same place that his familiarity with their language came from.

One of them pushed Maedhros forward with a shove and he responded by doubling his pace with more dwarvish vulgarities. Mairon was lucky that he didn’t know enough of the tongue of Aulë’s creatures to properly understand the things the elf had been saying in it all day.

They ended up in about as orderly of a line as they could be—what with the warm steel of a primed blaster pressed against Mairon’s back. They only stopped for a moment at the top of a miserable winding staircase to find themselves in heavy cuffs like the ones the last group of pirates had them in before continuing a walk down a cramped black hallway, what little light there was coming from hot and fiery vents coming from heavens-knew-where. The ship was massive, would probably take longer to cross than he could ever have the stamina for—and he knew from that fact that he had to still be somewhere near the hull and the cargo bay they had landed on. Soon, the scenery became familiar as the cramped hall opened up to a much larger space.

Everything about the ship was black. Black doors, black walls. There were no shadows in this place, for it was like they had become one with the shadows, lurking amongst them. The lights on the door panels blinked only weakly in the gloom, as if the darkness simply swallowed them up. He couldn‘t catch the code that the uruk at the front punched in. The keys were too dark, their symbols too vague; and when he looked he saw not a ten-key pad but a sixteen-key pad.

Of course the servants of Morgoth would use a different counting system.

One, two steps forward. Then the gun jabbed his back again, ushering him by faster. They took them to another chamber, with another waiting orc. He recognized her immediately by the braided crown as the one who captured them in the first place. She had exchanged her armored suit for a sleek and dark uniform, a compact blaster strapped to her hip. Like everything else on the ship, it looked like the old tech he helped to scrap from before the signal blackout, but the chrome shine on the handle implied that it was in fact new.

In fact, everything here seemed oddly recent. Somehow, they were manufacturing technology that had been distinctly unable to operate since the last great war.

“Enjoying the amenities?” she taunted at Maedhros, whose lip was curled in disgust. She spoke clean standard, unlike the other thrall of Morgoth who seemed more interested in speaking in their eerie, guttural—and somehow, familiar—tongue.

“Fuck you,” he ground out. She smirked at him as an uruk grabbed his arms and forced them ahead—like he even bothered to resist, though his face reflected his disgust—and she snapped plain, heavy white cuffs over his wrists. They bound his hands together uncomfortably, and he pulled back a bit as the uruk pushed him forward toward another door—but the creature growled threateningly and he quickly fell in line.

As if he’d done this before. By the way he spoke, he had.

There was a push on Mairon’s shoulder and he stumbled before their captor, all at once feeling a sense of fear and a rush of adrenaline that whispered at him to resist.

_ Do what they say and you might live_, he reminded himself. Not like there was much he could do. He was weak among the maiar, a brilliant mind but so very weak—he had seen elves who could perform more miracles than he could. There was no way he could defend himself against the entire room of what were clearly warriors. In fact, up until now he had just passed for an elf anywhere he went—and hoped for the best.

Better they not know who he was then, he thought. Better he not fight.

The orc seemed to notice his cooperation as she didn’t have any taunt to make; but she struggled still with the cuffs as Maedhros disappeared through the doorway into what he thought was a broad room with the low sound of chatter.

“Damn things—” she tossed them to the side, reaching behind her for another pair. These opened easily, and bound his arms with a cold _click_. A small red light came to life on the top. Of course they were electronic. Everything before the blackout was electronic—and he‘d taken apart countless carbon shells obscuring row after row of twisted, rusting wires as they stripped out the rubber and piled the less-oxidized copper up for processing.

“Out the door with you, then,” she ordered. She turned her eyes up to him and all he saw was hate—a sort of blatant disregard for him that may have told a different story from a better perspective.

“Elves,” he heard her mumble as he found himself half-dragged out the door. He still ached, his arms pulled in front of him at just the right angle to make things more uncomfortable. He’d had twisting and bruising like this before, when a chunk of ship collapsed on him while he was working as a scrapper. That was early in his life, before he managed to turn Aulë’s attention his way—but he knew he needed ice, and water, and maybe a bath. Maiar healed quickly but he was on the lower end of their lot—and it would take some time.

If he had that time. From what he knew he was marching to his death. Except that—it was only his body that could die.

At the thought of being thrust formless out into the vast expanse of dark space, floating and drifting for some eternity until he came across a ship...a sense of creeping panic overcame him.

Should he tell them who he was, he wondered? Or would they just kill him faster?

If the ship had a command deck, he realized, the door opened up here. Vast, vaulted ceilings funneled into the darkness. Somewhere at the far end was a great and terrible chair of command, something that he could only describe of as a throne.

_ A throne for the evil king_, he thought darkly.

He didn’t know if he was looking at passive panes of glass like the older blackout models or the more modern paned screens, but at the end of the great hall he saw the stars.

For the first time since he set out, he truly saw the stars outside of his planet, and it had to be when he was about to die. And they were _beautiful_. Unfiltered by the thick atmospheric gases at home, brilliant nebulae faced down the ship, bright swirls of galactic formations, massive star clusters.

He suddenly felt very, very small, with the entire universe ahead of him.

If this was to be his tomb, he thought, then at least it was a beautiful tomb.

They crowded him into a line with other elves. There were roughly a dozen of them total, with him at the end—and he could only just make out Maedhros’ head near the front, towering over the rest of them.

They all had the same features—lanky, some shade of copper to their hair. Clearly, they knew what they were looking for in Maedhros, even if they didn’t know his face.

There was another maia pacing the front of the line, in the shape of a dark girl with heavy combat boots and knives in her hands. They shone even in the dull light of the massive command deck that shone down from the upper level and the view of the stars. It was odd to see weapons like knives in this age, though he could guess she was pretty dangerous with them if she carried them now.

How the dark lord's forces had managed to attract so many maiar, he couldn’t be sure. They said some defected thousands of years ago when there was only one Arda. He didn’t know about the rest.

Something stirred from the upper deck. Something dark. The gathered group of orcs fell quiet, their helmets removed and the splashes of colorful ornaments in their hair and on their faces the only real vibrance in the room. But the air changed as the figure approached the broad stairs to the lower deck.

The maia who was watching them paced back his way. Their eyes locked for a moment. Hers lit with recognition—his with confusion as she hurried to his side.

“_Mairon?_" she hissed. “What are you _doing_—”

He didn’t know the maia. He didn’t know how she knew him, or why her wide eyes seemed vaguely familiar. Perhaps they had met once, before the blackout—but he wouldn’t remember. No one had memory of the days before the end of the Great War.

Heavy boots sounded against cold steel as the dark figure from above descended the steps. All at once, great malicious power spilled out around them in waves that were well near tangible. Mairon had an eerie sense of déjà vu as it pulled around him like the pull of the highly sulfuric ocean on his home planet, burning and bubbling.

He had never felt so much power from one person before. He didn’t know it was possible.

He wore a great ornamental hood that glowed lightly with markings of power—and under it he saw the vague shine of armor, armor like the kind Aulë used to send him to shine in its ornate display case. But this was not the glimmering golden armor of heroes.

Every bone in his body, every instinct he possessed told him that this was the dark lord, the Morgoth who ended life as they knew it and nearly destroyed the galaxy in the process. The dark lord who lurked in the shadows, whose will infested every single one of those ruined antimatter engines that Mairon had to rip apart in search of salvageable materials. He was supposed to be dead and gone—and yet here he was.

The very thought turned Mairon’s entire world upside down.

The maia who recognized him made a move to hurry to him. “My lord, there’s something you need to see—”

He waved her off before she could finish her sentence. “Later,” he dismissed. His voice was dark, low, just enough to send a chill of terror down Mairon’s spine. The maia looked like she was half of the mind to say something else—but she cast her eyes over the audience slowly gathering around them on both the upper deck and the one on which he was lined up. Then she fell silent behind him, walking in a stance of high command like he’d seen Aulë with his favorites as they went off on diplomatic trips to central space. She was important, and she knew his name—_how did she know his name_?

The dark lord’s head was turned to the line of elves, and Mairon could not make out his features from the end; but he walked with a horrible foreboding, each step slow and deliberate.

He stopped as he spotted Maedhros.

“Well?” he crooned, and it sounded like the entire room was holding its breath.

Maedhros’ lip curled. “Fuck off,” he spat.

Morgoth moved faster than Mairon could track as his hand reached out to grip Maedhros’ jaw, the force pulling the elf forward. He seemed so tall and imposing before, but against the bulk of an evil god he was little more than a waif like the rest of them.

“You’ve done your kin a disservice, Maedhros,” Morgoth taunted lowly. “How many elves I’ve had to kill in search of you... and it could have all been avoided if you came to me quietly.”

“Let them go,” Maedhros threatened as the dark lord dropped him. He heard the sound of his feet coming back to the ground as he stumbled to regain his balance. “You won’t get what you want.”

“Will I?” Even with the hood over his head Mairon could practically feel the smirk accompanying his mirth. It was something low and horrible that bounced off of his senses.

Then the monster pulled back his hood, and Mairon nearly forgot how to breathe.

It wasn’t fear he recognized, it was—_eerie familiarity_. His stomach dropped with dread. The dark lord had the same elegant features as his brother, his foil—but he was twisted and grey, and far too satisfied at the way his audience trembled before him.

In fact, he looked _far too much_ like Manwë Sulimo. It was wrong for the most evil thing in the galaxy to look like the last bastion of good they had.

He never once cast his eyes upon Mairon, all of his focus on Maedhros, and for that he was glad. There was something he was trying not to think about, some distant and vague memory that he didn’t want to dredge up—and that part of him _hurt_.

If the dark lord were to look upon him now he didn’t know if he could process these things anymore.

“You’ll tell me, elf,” he ordered. “Where is the Silmaril?”

“You think I know where dad hid all of his things?” spat Maedhros. Mairon couldn’t see him from beyond the group before him anymore, but just hearing his shaking voice told him that it took all of the courage he had to speak to the dark lord that way.

Morgoth chuckled. “Oh, I think you do,” he purred, and his voice filled the room, chillingly wicked. “Augguth—if you would be so kind as to bring me your little guest.”

He heard an orcish chuckle, and watched as an orc crossed the vast room in the opposite direction of the door in which he came in. In his absence the maia from before came forward, wide-eyed with a certain urgency.

“My lord,” she tried again, quietly—but not quietly enough that Mairon couldn’t hear her. “You really need to know. Your—”

“_Later_, Thuringwethil,” the dark lord snapped. She backed up and her reaction seemed a bit odd to Mairon—like she was surprised. But she backed up anyhow, and wrapped her way back around the audience. They parted ways for her, implying again that she was of some kind of status—and she let them.

She looked familiar, he thought. But she had very old eyes, eyes that he thought he would have remembered. He didn’t know a Thuringwethil, but the name itself made is head hurt. It was as if he _should_ know.

“You’ll need to _speak up_, Mairon,” she whispered to him. Like she knew him. It set him on edge. “He’s clearly in one of his moods today. I can’t get his attention.”

“What do you—” he started, but far doors came swinging open and the orc returned followed by two uruks who carried the hooded prisoner from earlier between them. With his hood pulled away, Mairon could see glimpses of another elf. Twisted gold jewelry hung askew and forgotten from tangled braids in his hair. They threw him on the ground before the dark lord and then the crowd tightened before him, obscuring the scene.

“_No_,” Maedhros gasped. To Mairon, even without seeing him, it sounded like the fight had suddenly drained from his voice.

“Do you remember each other?” The dark lord chuckled. It was low and deep and sounded somehow out of place. “I did suppose this would loosen your lips a little.”

The elf spoke up over the crowd, voice stronger than Mairon expected in his state. It cracked hoarsely with dehydration. “Don’t tell him _anything_, Maedhros,” he implored.

Maedhros sounded like he was begging now, panic laced into his voice. “I—I don’t know where the Silmaril is. My father hid them—I—I haven’t seen a single one since he died. _Please_—let him go and I’ll show you _maps_ of—of my father’s old routes.” The scene before him moved just enough that he caught a glimpse of one robed arm reaching for the hooded prisoner. Mairon almost wished he could look away, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it as the elf was forced to stagger to his knees. There was clearly little fight left in him, unable to stand, unable to flee.

“Liar,” Morgoth accused lightly. “Try again.”

“_Let him go,_" Maedhros pleaded again.

He could physically _hear_ Melkor’s smirk. “Wrong answer,” he said.

That was when the elf started to scream.

Whatever grip the dark lord had on the elf’s arm was torture, so clear and painful that even the uruk before Mairon visibly recoiled. His cries were unnatural, punctuated by a horrible crack in his throat. More than the cries of a dying man—he screamed like a man who _wished_ for death.

He’d never heard such a horrible sound in his life.

The sound was all it took to break Maedhros. Within seconds he had thrown himself at the dark lord’s feet, head bowed like a servant. Another sight that felt...too familiar. And _wrong_.

The other elf quieted as Morgoth dropped him and let him sink to the floor again.

“Dwarven system K-A-R two-four two-four. Find the Maruk Khazâd. It’s—I embedded my Silmaril into the gauntlet. That’s all I know, I _swear—_let him go, he has _nothing_ to do with this—”

Morgoth laughed. He heard the shrill sound of steel and knew he had pulled out a weapon. The crowd closed in around him in anticipation.

“You think I just let my guests leave so easily?” he challenged. “You think I’d want to leave _either _of you elf-lords alive—”

“S_top.”_

Mairon didn’t know what inspired him to speak. He didn’t know how he was able to project his voice, so commanding, so clean. Something about the scene before him had turned his stomach so much, had made it impossible to let it go on.

The dark lord’s thrall parted like a sea and suddenly there was nothing but thirty-odd feet between him and the worst nightmare of the civilized world. But the look on the dark lord’s face...

It went from unguarded, to utterly vulnerable, to wide with a combination of horror and astonishment that echoed years of world-weary sorrow. He looked ageless and afraid.

“Mairon,” he breathed. His name sounded like it had sat there for decades, centuries, millenia—too smooth and practiced and _sad_. “_Mairon_—”

He moved faster than Mairon could track, heavy hands setting on his shoulders, wide eyes tracking his every movement with a kind of disbelief.

“You’re—in cuffs,” he managed numbly. “You—”

He’d never seen a god choke up before, much less a dark lord. Mairon was frozen to the spot, unable to fight, unable to flee.

And the dark lord who captained _The Void_ was looking at him like some sort of treasure he had lost long ago. Like they knew each other.

“Who imprisoned you?” he finally asked. It was a low growl, a voice that echoed with the kind of unhinged anger only available to darkness. Mairon found his throat too dry to speak. Morgoth was tall, _tall like a vala_, he thought, all too imposing and leaving Mairon feeling smaller and weaker than Aulë ever would. When he let go of Mairon’s shoulders, turning to the gathered crowd, he was amazed he was able to hold himself up at all.

“Someone tell me _who_ in this void-damned hall put your lieutenant in a cell?” he demanded now, stronger, angrier than he had ever seen in that mocking discussion with the elves. “Or should I just punish _all _of you for your _blatant insubordination_?”

Mairon caught a glimpse of the orc who had first caught him in the _Sulimo_ to his right. She cowered now, afraid to come forward, afraid to double back. Some dark, hidden part of him wanted to point her out, to see what horrors came upon her.

But he made eye contact with her for just a moment, and saw the same horror and confusion that he felt. They were like a reflection, the two of them.

He couldn’t do it.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said to the floor, to anyone _but_ the dark lord. “They were just doing their job.”

The rage of a god was something that filled a room. It arced between them all like lightning, leaving even the grandest uruk quivering in fear.

All, it seemed, but the maia who had sought him out before. She seemed unfazed by his raw emotions, a hand on her hip.

“See what I was trying to tell you?” Thuringwethil criticized. “_Not now, Thuringwethil. Later, Thuringwethil_. Well _yes now, Melkor. _Sometimes it’s _important_.”

_ Melkor._ He’d heard that name before. Some early part of his memory reminded him that it was Morgoth’s true name, the name the Valar knew him by in ancient times, when the land was young and the Maiar were still whole.

That name seemed awfully sad to him for some reason.

He didn’t have time to gather his thoughts about it before a hand wrapped around his arm and the dark lord dragged him out of the crowd and away from the scene, back down the dark and cryptic halls of a spacecraft older and more renowned than the entirety of Manwë’s fleet.

-x-

His injured side jarred painfully against the dark wall of the room as the iron grip on his arm let go, giving him the chance to spring back away from his captor. He had thought even then among the ship that the concept of Morgoth was ambiguous; he was a mere legend, a threat used to remind them not to toy with powers that they did not understand. To take one’s ambitions too far was the work of Morgoth; chaos was his domain, the improbable and the unexplainable. Always work within the realm of logic.

To see him here, tall and gray, was to look upon a dark god from a thousand horrible legends. But the look on his face, caught somewhere between disbelief and indiscernible hope, had him remembering something that he shouldn’t. It was nothing of value, but a recurring dream that had always put him on edge during long days at the forge. A dream of a faceless man, imploring he protect himself without a voice. When he looked up he could do nothing but recall that feeling of utter despair. It came from a place without fear and rooted itself deeply into his thoughts.

_ I know this face_, it said. But he did not. Perhaps it was the occasional glimpses of portraits of Manwë that he was reminded of now, for there was a time that they were brothers.

His lip curled and he forced himself to look back up, to _glare_ at the god-creature who powered this ship and remind himself of just who this was. Of just what kind of savagery he witnessed back there.

His hip hit a table as he backed up. They were in a conference room of some kind, he thought, just a table and a light scatter of chairs that were not evenly set around it. On the far back wall was a large screen gone dark.

“Mairon,” Melkor breathed again through stony lips. Once more Mairon felt a horrible pull to some long lost memory. Aulë had said, once, that the things he could not remember were because they were simply too painful for him to recall—and he couldn’t think that perhaps he had been a prisoner once. Or perhaps he had been like that traitor maia who dragged him out of his and Maedhros’ prison cell, enchanted somehow into his dark service.

He thought of the horrible wails of the dirty elvish prisoner as Morgoth dropped him onto the ground, let him cower there. Perhaps his fate had been worse than that of a thrall. There were whispers, they said, that many of the maiar who awoke without memory had done so because of the horrible things that Morgoth had exposed them to in the days of Arda and the single planet.

“Stay back,” Mairon tried in his panic. “Stay—stay away from me.”

The dark lord looked _hurt_. Such evil wasn’t supposed to make facial expressions, he thought, but he looked _upset_. “Mairon,” he tried again, pronouncing every syllable slowly and with intent. “Where have you been? I’ve sent legions of orcs all over the galaxy in search of you. All we found were—pieces.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied, his hand going back to brace himself against the table before his legs could give out. “I don’t know you. Stop using my name.”

Melkor’s eyes lit up with realization—and with horror. “No,” he breathed. His voice shook—and it was like a dying storm, more expressive than he should have been. “Say my name,” he ordered. “_Please. _Tell me you know who I am.”

Mairon steeled himself. The room wavered around him, and there was fear and panic in the air that Mairon couldn’t quite say was his own. Things were just..._wrong_. The dark lord, grand and imposing, seemed small before him. Desperate. This was a completely different figure from the confidently wicked monster who sought the destruction of civilization. He wondered if this was a trick—he wondered how the dark lord knew his name, just a low-ranking maia who’d never left his planet.

“_Tell me_,” Melkor hissed again, and this time he sounded more forceful. This was a man who was used to giving orders. “Tell me or—I swear I will go back out there and kill those elves you just begged me to save—”

“You’re Morgoth,” Mairon spat. “You’re the dark lord who destroyed our entire civilization. You—you waged war against my master, and all of the other ainur. You killed the herald of Manwë. You’re—the greatest evil in all of the galaxy.” He couldn’t continue from there, though he already feared the repercussions of his honest words.

The dark lord was quiet. Unreadable. But Mairon could already feel the storm brewing somewhere behind his mask and the way he had closed himself off. There was something Mairon was missing—but thinking too hard about it made his head swim.

“Centuries, Mairon,” he said lowly, evenly. It felt like it took all of his control to maintain his tone, by the way the air crackled like grief. “Millenia, even. All that time and you never once called me by that name.” He reached for Mairon; but he stopped when he shrank back against the cold table. Mairon saw the conflict happening in his mind; and somehow it felt like both of their worlds were coming crashing down on them.

“I don’t know you,” he repeated. “You’re just—just a myth.”

“Whatever they did to you to make you this way…it runs deep.” He looked up, somewhere to his right and away from Mairon. His gaze hardened to steel. “I have to go _deal with _these elves. You’ll wait here.”

He swept out of the room in a flourish, leaving Mairon to finally sink down to the floor in a panic. They shouldn’t know each other. Yet something in his words made him feel like he was going to shatter.

He needed to get out of here. Morgoth left the door open; he could just walk through and hopefully find some way to escape. Steal a ship, _something_. This was all Great War tech. He’d overridden those protocols before and he could do it now, be in warp before they realize he’s gone.

But his legs wouldn’t _move_.

He focused first on breathing. Mairon was a natural logistician; rapid heart rate, difficulty moving, faintness—he was having a panic attack. Perhaps it was a bit overdue given the situation.

“Come on,” he whispered to himself. Deep breath in, deep breath out. He’d talked other maiar through these before, when they had those all-too-real nightmares, remnants of the war. “Come on. _Come on._" Breathe in, breathe out. Two arms, two legs, nine fingers—_nine? No—ten. Ten._

He worked through numeric tempering levels of steel until he felt his muscles loosen. Breathe in, breathe out—_prepare at 500c, temper at 230c until pale yellow, prep at 0.4 per cent carbon—_

Numbers were enough to redirect his focus. Feeling crept back into his body slowly, and he thought, _this isn’t over—_but he had to do whatever he could to get out of here.

Melkor had left the door open. All he needed to do was walk out. If he was lucky he could find a place to hide, or even a way out. He forced himself to repeat Curumo’s comm coordinates and access code. It was the only cross-system communication code he knew from that reddish rock of a planet.

He’d been hoping to have his adventure, his _chance_ to do something bigger and more ambitious. But taking control of his fate shouldn’t be at the cost of his life.

It was time, then, to go home. If that was possible anymore.

He willed himself up, using the table to steady himself for only a moment. He rolled the sleeves up on his dirty jumpsuit. He took a deep breath, and hurried out of the door.

The utility halls in the ship all seemed identical. Wide enough for only three or so people astride, with tall doors and high ceilings. Light came in from dark grates along the walls, an odd warm light that burned like fires from somewhere far below. The whole craft seemed to hum with power, access controls restricted to switches and keypads where the Ainur ships used complex touchpad interfaces. The ship was rough, strong, and functional, just like its occupants.

He hurried down the first corridor, then another before it opened up into a massive hall. Here it was busier, creatures of all shapes and sizes milling around. The murmur of language bounced off of the cold walls all around them, dim light filtering in from the grates below.

Far above he could see the stars of the galaxy, be it high windows or an elegant illusion.

He forced the panic not to overcome him as he ducked back into his corridor. He stuck out too much; he looked too much like the escaped prisoner that he was. He couldn’t venture into those halls in search of his escape.

He took one step back into the shadows, then another—and then he collided with something large and solid.

With a yelp he turned around to meet the imposing frame of the dark lord, and realized with abject horror that he was once again caught.

“I should have known you would try to run,” Melkor observed softly above the commotion of the space beyond them. He...didn’t even sound angry, Mairon thought.

“Just let me go,” Mairon said, almost _begged_. “Aulë will—he'll know you have me here—”

“Your _Aulë _won’t come near me.” Melkor shook his head like he knew something very private, very ancient. “Mairon—I’ll give you anything you want but I can’t let you leave. You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

“Stop using my name like you know me,” he spat.

The softness in Melkor’s expression hardened then, piercingly tired eyes locking him to his spot. “I know you better than you know yourself,” he replied cryptically. “And while I won’t keep you as a prisoner on your own ship—I won’t let you leave so they can _mutilate_ you again.”

“Mutilate? _Mutilate?_" He didn’t know where the strength in his voice came from, where the built-up frustration burst out of but he spoke without thought, crafting words in a language he wasn’t supposed to remember. “_You are the one who lets them mutilate you for the sake of your ambitions_.”

Somehow, by some twist of fate, he had rendered the dark lord himself speechless. A heavy silence followed them, punctuated only by Mairon’s shallow breaths.

“Do you really believe that?” Melkor asked. His words were guarded.

Mairon cast his eyes down, shook his head to clear his thoughts. “My—head hurts,” he mumbled. “I want to rest. I want to go home.”

Melkor took a single step back from him and he felt the air clear.

“Come with me first,” the dark lord ordered—offered? Implored. He held his arm out for Mairon to take. “You can leave if you let me give you something before you go. I’ll prepare a Federation ship for you if that’s what you want.”

Mairon’s jaw tensed. His head was spinning. Somehow, he felt like he had lost control of his own mind—and with it came this sense of helplessness, this loss of self.

He’d spoken without thinking, and he said words he didn’t even understand in a language he shouldn’t know. The worst part was that the people here seemed to have the answer—and it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

He didn’t want the enemy of the _entire galaxy_ to know him. And yet...

“...Alright,” he decided, brushing past the dark lord and his outstretched arm. He feared getting too close when so much as laying a hand on him may bring more of these thoughts to the surface. Things that didn’t make sense, that left his head spinning and his body weak.

In a lot of ways it felt like there was something fundamentally wrong with him while he was here. This horrible place, this murderer and destroyer of entire civilizations shouldn’t be so desperate for his cooperation. And he...shouldn’t be getting this sense of déjà vu when he looked at him.

Melkor’s demeanor changed immediately around him, the air lightening as he practically purred with hope. “This way,” he directed, and Mairon followed him through the labyrinth.


	3. 2

_He knew it was over from the shouting and the crashing. Here, deep within the annals of his fortress he could hear it._

_ He’d already flipped the desk and braced it against the broad doors. Like they wouldn’t make quick work of it. But it didn’t matter; with his mace in hand, Mairon knew he would wait. He would fight to the death to protect his master, even if the war was utterly lost, even if it was too late for either of them. He would war against them until he drew his dying breath—all for him. All for him._

_ “Mairon.” His master hadn’t said a word until now, and to utter his name so seldom used in these halls—and it was horrible, it was sobering. It was the most lucid voice Mairon had heard since before the day his master stormed into Angband with three horrible shining jewels burning holes in his hands._

_ It left him so disarmed, so unprepared for the look of resignation he saw written across his master’s face. The look of damning acceptance would haunt him for years to come._

_ “Leave,” he ordered. But it didn’t feel like an order, no, it hurt too much to be an order because orders were something he took and something he did without second thought, anything for his master—_

_ “No.” He’d already lost his composure before him, the great god who already looked so tired. He looked world-weary and perhaps now, after everything, he finally was. But still… _

_ He wouldn’t leave him here. He’d defy any order if he had to. _

-x-

The dark lord had a deep understanding of these utility halls, these high-speed lifts and nondescript doors that reminded him of ancient scrappers from an era of unsustainable technology. Ships from before the Blackout were larger, grander, packed with power; a ship was an entire city, unimaginably large and impossible to traverse without turbolifts and trains. Their wreckage wiped out entire civilizations when they fell to the planets they orbited.

This was a destroyer-class ship, he guessed. It was smaller than the world-destroying ships, faster and armed to the teeth. That didn’t make it feel any less vast to Mairon, whose largest ship experience was the Sulimo. The Sulimo could _land_ on the Void.

The vertical lift they took now was tiny and quiet. It flew past several floors with a distinct sense of weightlessness. Of all the off-planet technology he would never get used to, this was it. The sensation was almost the same as the first time he broke atmo while testing a new Eagle-class jet from their shop. The moment he broke atmo and switched off the fuel thrusters, he had a sense of weightlessness. He gazed into the void and for a moment it was like he wasn’t even here, this tiny maia on a rock hurtling through space.

Then he dropped back into orbit and the moment was over.

That feeling could never be quite replicated but whizzing past the floors at the best speeds mag-lev could maintain, he felt like he could maintain a memory of the past.

The lift stopped at their destination and opened up to a vast chamber of ancient architecture. He’d seen the same designs in the residence halls of Aulë and his most trusted assistants. The dwarves erected them, grand pillars and elegant carvings depicting ancient stories that they whispered with reverence to this day. But these halls, the halls of the dark lord, had a certain cut refinery to them. Here it looked almost like he had stepped into an underground hall, an ancient excavation of the likes they remembered through holovids and digital engravings. It seemed the old gods were the sentimental sort.

The effect of the vast room was lost on him by rows upon rows of old artifacts. He only recognized a few as what they were; crumbled pillars carefully roped together, half-formed statues, a basket overflowing with old swords that glowed with mithril warnings as Melkor neared. Most things were covered in dusty gray tarps and marked with paint in their odd language. _Enchanted, Broken, Third age_, things vaguely listed.

“You collect artifacts,” he realized dumbly just then. It was obvious, yes, and he felt silly for saying it.

“Mm.” Melkor’s answer was little more than a grunt as he looked over a line of covered boxes. He had no idea what was inside as the plain sheets were unmarked in the twilight glow of the room.

He selected the second box and gave the sheet a tug. The thing had to be twice his height and just as wide, but Melkor pulled the cover off easily and it fell to pool on the ground with a flourish.

It was a massive traditional safe. One side had the distinct markings of burns over brass filigree, but the structure was undamaged. There were analog dials, unpowered, dominated by two massive levers.

These things could survive _anything_, and clearly whatever was inside had Melkor interested in protecting it.

“You might want to step back,” suggested Melkor mildly. “The door can be a bit touchy.”

There was a click, and the heavy groan of a massive metal mechanism. The door buckled a little under its own weight then creaked open, giving Mairon barely a moment to sidestep its heavy swing. The door itself and the walls of the safe were several feet thick, its interior almost like a cramped steel room.

A single box sat in on top of a pedestal in the back, its carved wood casting a light cherry reflection on the dark back wall.

Melkor worked some kind of enchantment and a tiny ball of light drifted into the room, dimly bathing its surroundings in a cold blue glow.

Mairon didn’t even notice Melkor hovering behind him at first as he climbed into the small room of the safe. There was great power here, drawing him in. It whispered with a distinct familiariy, calling as it pulled him in.

_ Is it calling my name?_ he thought as waves of power enveloped him.

Melkor cut around him and he was half of the mind to put out his arm and stop him. There was a hunger that had woken inside him, a pull for whatever was there that he could barely hold back.

But no one gets in the way of the dark lord, he reminded himself. At least—no one who lived to tell the tale.

The box itself was magicked, he could tell now; the mithril it was made of gave off its own intense light at the point of contact between itself and Melkor. Mithril could sense him and his thrall, but it didn’t seem to bother him one bit.

“Hold out your hand,” he instructed as he opened the lid of the chest. Mairon could do little but obey. He didn’t know what to expect—something cursed? Something evil?

He withdrew a necklace set with a deep red stone.

The stone itself, despite the intricate make of the jewelry, was little more than a polished rock. It didn’t seem special in any way, no unique shine, no chromatic shifts—but Mairon was all eyes for it anyway.

It felt too familiar.

“It was convenient that the old humans assumed these little pieces of rock were blessed in some way,” Melkor mused before him. “They took them in as treasures and they guarded them jealously. That made it easier to track them down. Unluckily for us—I’m not the only one in search of the relics.”

The admission came with a certain level of care as he held it out by the chain and carefully dropped it into Mairon’s waiting palm.

Mairon had trouble tracking what happened between that moment and the rough jostle on his bruises as Melkor caught him mid-fall. There was a rush of power that coursed through him like electricity, jarring his muscles and penetrating deep into his bones. The surge continued up into his mind, his heart, his spirit—and with it his blood felt aflame.

_ You are fire_, some deep part of himself promised. The world exploded with color and he shut his eyes to it.

_ Light fingers traced the curve of the great arch, dancing among the crackling flames. “You were right,” he breathed with a pointed smirk. “Fire is more beautiful when it is free.”_

_ A deep chuckle resonated with his aspirations_. _“I knew you would love it,” said a dark voice. “Tell me, pet—what shall you craft for me first from these fires?”_

_ A thin smile graced his lips. “A great warhammer,” he promised._

Mairon opened his eyes to near-darkness. His shoulder should have pulsed in agony, close against hard black armor and cold silks as Melkor supported him.

There was no pain. He felt energized, better than he had perhaps in a long time. Completely healed.

The necklace in his hand had crumbled. Only sand remained in his closed fist. It fell through his fingers in a quiet stream, pooling on the ground. Soon enough, he came to his senses—_five feet rule,_ he thought, and put himself back on his feet and away from the dark lord.

“What was that?” he demanded, feeling a mix of panic and raw energy rising from within him. The world felt sharper, cleaner. “What did you just do?”

Melkor was harder to read than ever, face blank as he looked down at what ought to be a small, insignificant forge maia. _Ought to be_. For some reason, he had yet to feel like he was being seen that way under that cold gaze.

“I did nothing,” he defended softly. His voice was low and carried with it a distinct timbre Mairon had somehow been unable to pick up before. In the grand room in which they met he had sounded like thunder, rolling rage and power; but here…he was like rain.

Mairon steeled himself from feeling disarmed by his revelation. “Then what was _that_?” he asked.

“It was a piece of your _soul_, Mairon,” he answered firmly. “Your Fëa. I scoured the galaxy to find it. When you came into contact with it, you rejoined. Tell me—you feel lighter, yes? _Stronger_.”

He wasn’t lying. Mairon wished he was lying. He _wasn’t_ lying, because somehow Mairon _knew_ that was him. Other maiar had found similar pieces of themselves before, from ancient wars and old tales. Often they were embedded into rocks, scoured into the pieces of whatever place they fell. He knew the names of every single maia at the forges who still sought out pieces of themselves. It was quite a source of gossip.

Aulë had never told him that he was fractured too.

“Why did you have that?” he asked. He felt suddenly raw, defensive. Whatever core part of himself, whatever invasive piece told him to trust this man—this god, this _whatever_—he pushed it down, choked it out with thoughts of atrocities, forced his doubt out of his mind.

Melkor was a mix of an unreadable surface of stone and an open book, flashing between the two faster than his eyes could have followed mere minutes ago. But he was keen now, and he saw the concern there. The softness was unlike the ways of a dark god.

“…I couldn’t find you,” he confessed. “But I knew where that pendant was. I would take whatever I could get. Piece you together myself if I must.”

Mairon frowned, pushing his hair out of his face. As much as he would like to know _why_ the _fallen Vala_ himself would hunt for a forge maia, he had a feeling the answer was not what he wanted to hear. Instead he set upon him a steady glare that came far easier than it should. “You promised me a Federation ship and safe passage.”

He expected a fight. He expected to be kept by force. Something, even more than their conversation earlier, told him Morgoth Bauglir had no interest in giving him up. It made no _sense_—he was just a scrapper, just a passerby whose misguided ambitions led him to an unexpected place. _No one special_.

Yet he got an eerie sense that it wasn’t quite the case anymore. What that piece of his soul had really done was plant the seeds of doubt in his mind, and they troubled him now as he wondered what this feeling meant.

The whole day he’d been bothered by strange reflections of thoughts, by fragments of memories that should not be. All the maiar, the elves, _anyone_ who lived to tell the story of the last great war had lost their memories. That was the _real_ price of the signal blackout.

When he woke he was told that before, he was a forge maia. They didn't need so many maiar at the forges now, so he was a scrapper instead. Memories of sweeping halls, gray hands, wild and raging fires—should not come to him now. A language he had never heard in his life should not feel as familiar as his own thoughts. He should be remembering Aulë, the forges, his life among the gods. It was the same glimpses which his companions on that red planet received in their dreams.

In an unexpected move, Melkor looked down. His face was like stone again, unchanging. A forced mask.

He pulled up his sleeve and from his wrist he detached a dark band.

“My comm chip,” he explained as he held it out. “This will get you anywhere you want to go. Just show it to anyone you come by and they will give you whatever you want. Just…” He penned some coordinates into the mini screen—a screen with a series of mechanical buttons on the sides, like the old broken tech from before the Blackout. It seemed all things here were miraculously working from a bygone era. “It will give you directions to Thuringwethil, and to the ship. She can give you some clothes that aren’t…” He trailed off, but the way his eyes swept over Mairon’s dirty orange jumpsuit said enough.

He took one step back, then another; then he was turning and for some reason Melkor _wasn’t_ stopping him from leaving. He held the comm in his hands, the worn leather straps oddly personal. The tiny screen displayed a rudimentary map that gave him directions to the lift.

He didn’t look back, but Melkor was silent behind him.

“…Thank you,” he finally said softly. It felt odd. “For keeping to our terms.”

Melkor didn’t answer. When he finally worked up the courage to look back, the dark lord was gone. The dust that remained from the stone still pooled on the ground by the old chest, and the safe felt somehow more worn than it did minutes ago.

He turned back, steeled himself, and hoped for the best. The comm could be lying. It could all be a trap. But something in the reluctance in the air had him convinced that he had a way out.

The comm sent him back the way he came, the lift opening automatically when the device came into contact with it. The ship was truly automated; none of the clunky levers and switches of Federation ships. Even eagle-class ships didn’t have comm scanners. Everyone scanned their access keys to get around, save for a few of the most elite commanders. There was a certain paranoia surrounding heavy-duty comm chips that led to their inherent simplicity and limited access range. No one forgot the signal blackout.

That was what made this place all the more eerie. He knew there should have been no way this ship was still running. Antimatter signals didn’t work anymore. When he was very young he used to play with the signal chips off of old scrappers, hoping that he could get one running again. They never worked. It was like the laws of physics just stopped applying to them one day, and it never sorted itself out.

The lift let him off at a different floor from where he started. The lights were brighter here, the metal of the floors a cool grey steel instead of oppressive black. The comm told him to go to the left, which he did. He passed two plain metal doors and then went through an arch lined with data panels, green-lit digital meters and warning lights. A single light flashed under a signal code in pale orange.

It opened up to a pale gray common area of some sort, the lights soft and steady like those he remembered in the Sulimo’s halls. There was a kitchen directly across from him, and he recognized the same stove he knew from home, the same cryo storage and the same countertops. Even The Void was not devoid of hospitality. The maia from earlier—Thuringwethil—was sitting at a circular white table in the middle of the lounge and devouring a protein ration in what seemed like record pace. The wrapper was distinctly Federation coded in blue and white.

Funny how some things never changed.

As soon as she saw him she rose from her chair—so quickly that it fell back, clattering to the floor.

“Mairon!” she exclaimed.

He felt strange under her perceptive gaze. She watched him like she was searching for changes, catching every minor difference from some standard in her mind.

“You look better,” she finally said. “Healthier—_taller?_ Did the boss set you up with that trinket he found on Gillion?”

“He said you would help me find clothes,” he answered automatically. It was all that could come to his mind. She seemed unarmed, unguarded. Even now she was still composing herself as if she were expecting something.

She looked him over as if the request were no surprise. “You’re a bit smaller than you used to be,” she observed. “I’ll—see what I can find.”

“You knew me too?” he blurted. He stopped himself from continuing—even _if_ Melkor was telling the truth, he couldn’t say for sure. She did, however, seem oddly familiar. Maybe he met her once before she defected.

On her part, her eyes widened only a fraction before she composed herself. Her expression transformed into a knowing smirk—some kind of secret with herself. He felt like perhaps that was the last thing he should have said.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could feel the memory of a woman of the past, all dark cloaks and silvery smiles.

_ Working with Thuringwethil was always a game of strategy. To win her loyalty was to keep a valuable ally. She had no care for rank or role. To work with her was a constant, subtle exchange of power. _

“Oh, we’ve met,” she answered vaguely with a knowing smirk. “I’ll just be a moment, then.”

He half-followed her until she slipped into that second silver door. She was only gone for a moment, though; then she was back with the door held open and a folded uniform similar to her own in her hands.

“I’ve got to get back to the maintenance dock before the mechanics decide to slack off,” she explained blandly as she let him in, handing off the clothes along the way. They were soft but thick, made of durable material. Finer than his scratchy orange jumpsuit, but simple in dark gray and black.

“Thanks,” he mumbled. She walked out without so much as a word, and he could hear the beep of a comm as she entered a dial code on her wrist.

The door slid shut and he took in his surroundings. It was just a storeroom, racks of uniforms and boots all around him. On the back wall hung five simple blasters, the cool metal reflecting the toneless lights in the ceiling.

If he could he would have wanted to hunt down a shower, but he didn’t want to try his luck on this ship. Clean clothes were enough to keep going. Small victories, he thought; just a few hours ago he was a prisoner on this ship awaiting what would inevitably be his death. How much could change in so little time? And now he felt primarily—_curiosity._

He should just do what he could to go, he thought. He should do _whatever_ he needed to get home safe. He should be able to get back so he could tell Aulë that Morgoth was out there, that he had an entire army worth of orcs on his ship and he was attacking Federation transports. And yet he let his curiosity control him. Something wasn’t right here; there was a story he wasn’t being told. There were people here who knew him, powerful people.

Morgoth himself looked at him like he was the center of the universe and everything about that made no _sense_.

He steeled himself as he buttoned up the uniform. The uniform was a simple quilted tunic and trousers, thick and durable but free enough for easy movement. The pants were a bit too long, the shoulders too broad, but it would work and was better than a torn jumpsuit. He laced up a pair of slightly-too-large boots, a belt with a holster like the ones the officers wore on the Sulimo.

His eyes fell over the blaster pistols again. In an afterthought, he walked over to the back wall and grabbed one. It was cold in his hands, inactive. However, he knew from repairing similar models that all he had to do was flip the switch under the grip and it would heat up. These things weren’t particularly precise but they packed a punch.

He felt a bit better with a weapon. He didn’t know how to fire it, not really—not more than he needed to know to troubleshoot them. But it was better than nothing.

He picked the comm back up from the ledge he sat it on. Already it was giving him new directions. If Melkor was telling the truth, this was his way out of the ship. He longed already for the balmy desert heat of his home planet, the dry rock from which they worked and lived. It wasn’t necessary the aspect of returning home—surely he’d never be allowed outside _again_ at this rate—but it was the familiarity. Maybe, coming home, he could find some sense of normalcy again and his scrambling brain would fall quiet.

He’d run away hoping to fulfill his ambitions. He’d dreamed of greater skies, of ships and adrenaline and raw adventure. He hadn’t wanted _this_.

He followed the directions to another lift, down a hall. Yet another lift. The ship felt endlessly huge, a network of doors and halls and endless people—so many people. This was his first time on a massive populated ship, and he found that it was like the cities planetside—a civilization. In common clothes he blended in and no one even thought to look in his direction, no one stopping or staring or questioning.

He walked down a massive hall that, like the one before in which he’d run into Melkor, seemed to be a popular thoroughway. He towered above the orcs bustling about; but he was not alone, serious-faced elves walking among them or the rare and finely dressed maiar whose power fell off of them in waves as they walked openly among them. It was different from what he’d always learned. He was weak and insignificant enough to blend in among elves and men; other maiar, though, were supposed to at _least_ avoid making a scene of their inherent differences from their peers. In days long ago this did not matter, but in an age of collaboration and open forum the practice of humility spread quickly. It seemed that the rules were different in Morgoth’s realm.

There were uruks who were much like the ones he’d seen before, masked and armed and moving in small units. But at the other end of the hall he noticed an unmasked uruk on a bench, poring over a handheld tablet that let off a green glow with whatever he looked over. Another one walking in the opposite direction of him, laughter booming through the hall.

It was strange, seeing these creatures of war bumbling about like plain folk. He could have just as easily seen such a sight on the transfer station before he boarded the Sulimo, though be it less diverse—the core planets preferred the employ of men, who were quick to learn and willing to work for low wages. It was hard to equate creatures he had perceived as bred for war with civilization, to think of them as having lives and thoughts of their own.

What he saw, like much of what he had seen so far, was nothing like the stories he’d been told about dark space. Somewhere deep within the fog in his brain, he asked himself _why _he ended up here, when he very well should have been drifting in space.

The thoughts carried him far past the orcs, down the hall, beyond a veritable barrier of guards and officers who only averted their eyes and backed away when instinct drove him to level Melkor’s comm at them, an oddly nondescript symbol of power. This thing really did just let him go wherever he wanted. Right through electrically generated barriers, past doors, and down a broad staircase that led him into a docking bay.

He wished he had more time to gawk at this intact vision of ancient technology. Old forbidden diagrams and notes didn’t do the real thing justice. The rusted-out scrappers he took apart were only hints of an old world in comparison to what he was seeing now.

It was some kind of electrical field at the end of the docking bay that maintained a cool but breathable atmosphere. Rows of small single-passenger ships, parts and pieces scattered all around them, signified its purpose. The mechanics who puttered about paid him no mind, mumbling amongst each other, singing strange shanty tunes. Most of them were orcs—_orcs_. Orcs doing _science_.

It bothered him that he understood them, though they spoke only the same language as before. _The Black Speech_, he wanted to think to himself. The dark thrall had no proper, developed language according to the Federation. He understood what they were saying and felt the same words on his tongue, like a thousand other strange languages that had flitted through his mind since he laid eyes on their leader.

This place was disorienting. He needed to leave. He had—so many questions. Some voice of reason told him he _shouldn’t_ be asking questions.

He knew which ship was his when he saw it—white-and-yellow, with the crest of the core planets on its side. The Landroval cruisers were the ranged scout ships of the Eagle-class line, quick and meant for long-distance missions for up to two pilots. They weren’t heavily armed nor meant for much more than stealthy reconnaissance, but they were fast enough to maneuver and something he’d tried a few times in flight sims. He could fly this, he thought, given the circumstances.

He climbed the wing to the popped hood, staring into the cockpit. Familiar buttons and switches, command consoles and communications HUDs that he had only seen virtually and through the lens of scientific data. The real thing was lightly scuffed, lined with clear use, and a little dusty—and as close as he would ever get to one of these ships again, he thought, because when he made it back he’d never be allowed off his planet again. He thought the scrapyards were miserable, but at least he saw the sky. They may well send him somewhere worse, to a mining outpost or a black-box research base.

The keychip was sitting in the seat in the front. Next to it was the shining metal case of a long-range communicator, no bigger than his palm. He reached for both as he tried to remember Curumo’s extension, tried to even imagine what he would say to him—hoping Aulë wasn’t concerned with the antics of a scrapper and metalworker; hoping that he hadn’t damned himself. He couldn’t imagine anywhere else to go; the moment he took off he’d be in a stolen Federation ship on enemy territory. If he didn’t talk to them then he may find himself in even deeper trouble trying to break out of dark space without clearance. Even worse would be explaining how he got out in the first place.

_ Room for two,_ his mind also provided in an almost dark glee. It was the same voice that told him to stay in this place. _Too many questions_.

He pocketed the keychip and the Federation communicator and, before he could stop himself, climbed off of the side of the ship. Shaking hands lifted Melkor’s comm, levelled the now-darkened screen.

It looked similar enough to the tiny comms used before the signal blackout, their strange screens and mysterious power source. Two buttons on the side, a subtle turning dial that he wouldn’t notice unless he searched for it. He never did find out what they did.

Curiosity commanded him to push the first one, the one on the top of the device. The recording symbol that greeted him as the screen flashed to life was oddly universal.

_ So it works like this,_ he thought to himself.

He raised the device to his face and spoke to it. “Give me directions to the holding cells,” he commanded as clearly as he could. He didn’t even think about using that strange language this time. He’d been using it for so long already without thinking about it. It felt wrong, and yet…he couldn’t fault whatever part of his mind knew it. He only knew that this was what he had become, some time between landing on this horrid ship and now, standing before his one way out and making the most ridiculous impulse decision to turn around.

The comm registered his instructions immediately over the clamor of mechanical tools and the ever pervasive hum of the ship. The screen flashed with new directions, pointing much like a compass in the way of the last set.

It was incredible technology, and it was all wrong that it still worked to this day when every single piece he’d seen had long since crumbled into a useless piece of scrap.

-x-

He wasn’t surprised that they kept the ships close to the holding cells. No lifts this time; just a steep flight of stairs in a utility corridor, somewhere between two heavy wall panels. He was surprised when he wasn’t tired by the time that he reached the top; just like his injuries from before, his stamina had improved since coming into contact with that strange piece of jewelry. Every fiber of his being wanted to tell him that Melkor was right, that _he _was right, that he’d touched a piece of his soul and absorbed it, making himself stronger—but the sheer _wrongness_ of being more than a powerless maia in a scrapyard still jarred him.

_ This was what you wanted_, he thought wryly. _To be more than what they wanted you to be_.

The thought hit him with a sense of déjà vu.

The long, low-lit hall at the top of the stairs was empty. And the door that opened up for him on the other end was—far too familiar.

This was the corridor from before, he thought, from when he was first imprisoned here. They keypads, the black panels. Every door yielded to him without so much as a touch, though; he figured it was this damn comm in his hand, meant for the lord of this vessel.

Further down the ceiling panels disappeared and it became more familiar. Water and utility pipes buzzed ahead, snaking down the walls to some place below the floor right by the door he was supposed to enter.

It was solid, and black, and groaned open with some lack of use when he held the comm over the keypad. _The Void_ didn’t seem to keep prisoners very often, he thought. He and Maedhros and the hooded figure had been the only three he saw in that room.

There was an uruk on the ground before him—dead or unconscious, he couldn’t say. Over the uruk, Maedhros froze; he was crouched with the uruk’s communicator in hand, hair a tangled mess over his shocked face. A patch of blood bloomed on his dirty clothes.

He picked up the unconscious uruk’s blaster faster than Mairon could track, levelling it at his chest.

“_You_,” he growled. “I should have known. Should have fucking recognized your disgusting face. You looked too _pathetic_ to be him. Thought you had more dignity than that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mairon stated cleanly.

“Liar.” He looked too unstable to shoot, Mairon thought, shaking arms faltering as the hooded figure from before walked through the open cell door behind him and looked him over with perceptive dark eyes.

“Maedhros,” the stranger tried quietly. “Shooting it won’t kill it.”

“Sure, but it’ll hurt _damn good_,” the elf grit out. Turning his complete attention back to Mairon, he barked, “What do you want, Gorthaur? Come to string me up again? To spit in my face?” He raised his blaster back to full height where it had fallen. “I don’t make concessions to demons like _you_ anymore.”

Mairon remembered then the chip in his pocket. Slowly—slowly enough that Maedhros could follow his movements and know that he meant no harm—he withdrew the ship’s activation sequence from his front pocket.

“You said you had escaped from here before,” he said slowly. His eyes were on the weapon. He wasn’t a particularly powerful maia; a good blast was all it would take to shatter him. Maedhros didn’t seem to buy into that.

“You can’t keep us,” the elf replied cruelly, eyes narrowed. “Lock me up, try to kill me all you want. I’ll always find my way back out.”

“I’m not stopping you.” He tossed the chip on the ground. It landed on the arm of the unconscious uruk, close enough for Maedhros to see.

His eyes widened as he identified the chip. “You’re letting us go,” he realized. “_Why_ would Gorthaur let us go?”

Mairon’s watchful eye hardened. “It’s a long-distance scout ship. Landroval class. Not the best but it’s fast and it looks like it’s got enough fuel to get you out of range. It’s sitting in a maintenance bay near here. There’s four guards at the door so be discreet.”

At once, Maedhros lowered the blaster so that he could reach for the ship’s command sequence. Mairon ducked out of the doorframe, far out of the way, and walked briskly down the hall. Once a door had snapped shut between them, he let out a measured breath.

They made eye contact just once as the door closed, an exchange of thanks that couldn’t be put into words. Every bone in his body screamed to hurry after him, to stop him. _Your one way out_, logic reminded him.

He had just _given up_ his one way out. He’d just trapped himself on Melkor’s ship. Sheer willpower kept the panic at bay. He’d have to find a different way home. There were too many strange things here, too many questions—and he didn’t have any of the answers he wanted.

The Federation communicator sat heavy in his pocket, a flat chunk of shiny metal. He needed to find a chance to get away, somewhere private. Somewhere that he knew no one would be listening. Then he could make contact with the Federation.

With Melkor’s comm in his hand right now, he wouldn’t be finding that. But, he could find _other_ answers he needed. If Melkor was as amenable as he’d been earlier, maybe he could make some sense out of this place.

He held down that button on the side of the small square screen again. He took a deep breath. This may not even work, he thought.

The recording symbol flashed onto the screen. “Take me to Mor—to Melkor,” he breathed.

The screen flashed, and he didn’t know if the new instructions that appeared were comforting or terrifying.


	4. 3

_The forges were a prison sentence. They were no place for Aulë’s best, his brightest, his smartest. No, they were a punishment. The favorites, the true favorites—they were craftsmen, designers, whose work trickled down into instructions for the likes of him._

_From the beginning of time, Mairon had pledged his loyalty to these halls. He only wished he knew what he was being punished for._

The deeper into the ship he went, the more dilapidated it became. He had to trust the comm watch. Its arrows guided him forward, around broken floor grates, rusted doors half on their hinges, electrical rubble. It looked like war had visited this place. The blaster scars that marred the walls spoke volumes of the story the ship wasn’t telling him.

His destination was somewhere in the middle of the next room. The busted doorframe opened up to a much cleaner circular room—still worn, but cleaner.

In the middle of the room, approximately fourteen feet across and just as tall, was the antimatter engine itself. Or rather, the room wrapped around a chunk of the antimatter engine. He could see through the grating where it descended far into the ships, where it provided the power that moved massive thrusters and grand contraptions. This was only the cap of the engine. He’d seen these before, pieced out in the scrap yards into massive chunks lowered in by huge junkers with engines that knocked cranes onto their sides. He’d never seen one operational. This particular engine had only a smooth black cap, no status screens or engine lights. He couldn’t say he knew for certain how any Antimatter ship was operated, but _The Void_ left him particularly unsure.

Motion at the top was all that alerted him of the figure casually perched high above on the cap. He wasn’t sure how he got up there, or how the comm knew where to take him, but he recognized Melkor’s pointed boots immediately from earlier in the day.

His voice boomed through the room, hummed in sync with the engine below him.

“I thought you were leaving,” he said. He was perched high above among the structural arches that anchored the antimatter engine to the walls. The engine seemed to hum mechanically with his words.

“I was,” answered Mairon vaguely. It was hard to say out loud that he changed his mind. He gave up his way off this ship. Something was keeping him here.

“The ship is leaving dock, and you are not on it.” He didn’t know how Melkor could tell this. A wave of relief still washed over him; _they got out_, he thought. The elves would be well into warp soon. And he…was here. He’d made his choice. He could have gone, returned home with a story to tell—if they let him—but he was seeing too many things, _feeling_ too many things. The teasing glimpses of memories that flashed through his mind were too much to leave behind. He needed answers.

“I have so many questions,” he started slowly, taking a step forward. There was so much power in this dilapidated room. It all centered on him—on Melkor. Morgoth. Call him what he may. Tendrils of shadow lapped hungrily at his features, obscuring him from Mairon’s sight. It would be easier to talk like this, he thought, when he wasn’t able to see the expressive face of what should be an ageless god.

“Then ask.” It didn’t sound like a request—nor an order. He couldn’t decipher the emotion in that voice.

He swallowed. What was there to ask? Why did he know this voice? What were those words he spoke before—and why did he speak a dead language like he knew it? What were these strange memories?

_Why _did looking at his face make him feel so _sad_?

“In the room before,” he said, measuring his words, “why did you call me _lieutenant_?”

He didn’t know if his questions were the right ones or not, but the fabric of Melkor’s clothes rustled as he dropped down from his perch. He did so in one smooth motion, his feet meeting the floor with little more than a tap.

“Lieutenant,” Melkor repeated. The frown that crossed his face was dignified, measured. He was holding onto a mask himself—one that Mairon had written into his own muscle memory. “Master. King. _God_.” He paced a wordless circle around Mairon, who turned to follow the movement. _Never take your eyes off the enemy_. Who taught him that?

“What does that mean to you?” he prompted.

Melkor’s eyes flashed like ice. “You could have had any title you wanted,” he said. “You chose it. _Lieutenant_. Second.”

“You’re saying I worked for you, then?” he asked. “I was a traitor?”

Melkor stilled. He watched Mairon with eyes like the frost that settled over the red rocks in the winter, jarringly pale on the dark landscape.

“_In his vast works and in the deceits of his cunning,_” he quoted, “_Sauron had a part, and was only less evil than his master in that for long he served another and not himself_.”

Mairon tensed. “_Valaquenta_,” he breathed.

“So the legends of Men endure even now,” Melkor said evenly. “I am surprised Aulë would allow you to read the old legends.”

“Not all of them.” He shifted on his feet, in the slightly-too-large boots. He felt so small here. “Some stories were lost to time. Others were too sad to share, he said. Too many wars on Arda.”

“Did he tell you who the men called _Sauron_?” Like before, he spoke the name sourly. Like it was a bitter drink, a poison.

He thought of the stories. He hadn’t heard them in a long time. Sometimes, on a holiday, someone would read a passage. Mairon had never been interested; the legends didn’t resonate with him like the others. Absorbed in his work, he spent most of those nights studying the old-war circuitry. He knew who Sauron was—because he knew about the earliest wars. Most of those stories gave him anxiety for reasons he could not explain.

The answers were falling together in a way that didn’t sit right with him

“So you’re saying _I’m_ Sauron?” he accused.

Melkor didn’t answer.

Mairon bit his lip. The engine was picking up pace, the low hum of electricity intensifying. “I don’t understand,” he said. “This—whole _place_ makes no sense to me. It’s like my mind can’t catch up to what’s going on. And when I look at you—” He cut off. His mouth felt dry.

_When I look at you, I feel so sad._

Mairon felt clumsy in here. Small. In comparison, Melkor moved with the shadows and all the grace of a god.

He swallowed. “A week ago, I was just a scrapper. Today I was held at gunpoint, imprisoned, and now I’ve got orcs bowing to me and you’re trying to tell me that I was a traitor.” The scrapyard had always felt like a punishment. He had no passion for taking things apart—he loved design, science. The maiar were supposed to follow their strengths.

He remembered Aulë’s pitying stare when he tried to contest it. _What is a maia who cannot even temper steel on his own?_ He had challenged. Mairon shrank back, never returned to ask those questions again. He was in the forges because he was weak.

If that necklace told him anything as it dissolved in his hands, it was that he shouldn’t be so weak.

“There would have been no war without you, Mairon.” The finality in his voice stung. It was more logical not to believe someone with a reputation for trickery; he shouldn’t be believing an ounce of this. Yet the honesty when he spoke was tangible.

_“With you? I doubt I could keep a secret for long.”_

_Thin lips curved into a sly grin. “Of course not. You are a terrible liar.”_

He shook his head, a half-baked effort to clear the fog in his brain. The hum of the engine was maddening.

“I don’t know if I believe you yet.” A necessary lie. “But I am connected to this place somehow. I want to know why.” He frowned. “When you handed me that necklace, I remembered—something. Fire. A cave. And _your _voice.”

Melkor’s shadowy eyes lit up with—hope? Expectation?

“There will be more,” he promised. “I’ve leads on—more relics. Pieces of you.”

Mairon wanted to be a good maia. He wanted to be able to go back to the scrapyard, to live his mundane life as Aulë saw fit. But he _couldn’t_. Melkor was dangling a far-too-appetizing treat before a starving man. Power. History. Truth.

“If I stay,” he tried, swallowing heavily. “_If _I—stay, what will that mean? You are clearly the—highest power here.” _Highest power_. That was a mockery of the well of strength he sensed here. Everything was drenched in Melkor’s power. He was—a wellspring of it, a concentration of might. Suitable to his name.

Yet he lacked the cold eyes and the cruel smile that Mairon saw in the hall before. “I would put you back together,” Melkor replied easily. Like it was the only thing he could say. “And I would make it clear to the _Federation_—“ he spat the words like they were sour coming out of his mouth, “—that they will not hide you from me. With you by my side, we would rule the stars.”

He remembered a gray smile. _With you by my side, Beleriand—nay, all of this world—shall be defenseless._

In a mimicry of a life he shouldn’t recall, he stretched extended his arm. Melkor took it—clasped it in a bond as old as time itself. His hands were cold.

His mouth moved without recollection. “_We have a deal_,” he repeated.

The air around them cleared. The shadows retracted. He came back to the present, to this room—to the one who watched him with curiosity and hope.

_“Excellent,” the dark lord purred, pulling him in closer. “You were always smarter than the others.”_

Here and now, the same mouth curled into a mockery of a smile—something sad, indistinct. “I have waited so long, Mairon,” he said. Without all of his power wrapped around him, façade broken, he sounded so old and weary.

Mairon pulled his hand back. Call him a fool for doing this—he probably was. But there was a sense of exhilaration too. This was his choice to make—he was standing on a hostile ship, in front of a legendary villain, and felt completely in control of his destiny. He could have left. He chose to seek answers instead.

The hum of the engine grew louder, more cacophonous. The ground beneath them shook, and Melkor’s eyes cast up to the top of the engine with a kind of knowledge that Mairon wouldn’t understand. Antimatter engines were a mystery the modern world had yet to solve.

“Something is happening,” observed Melkor. “Stay h—”

“I’m not _staying here_,” he protested automatically. “I’m not your prisoner. If I am, perhaps you should show me to the cells again—”

“Never.” He looked wounded. Then the urgency lapsed into hardness again. He looked at Mairon and there was only a moment of internal conflict before he brushed past him, all dark robes and billowing cape.

“This way,” he instructed.

Mairon may have been a fool. Maybe he was making the worst decision of his life. Or maybe, just maybe, he was seeking freedom.

So he followed.

-x-

There were no alarm lights on the lower levels of the ship. Mairon jogged to keep up. The only urgency he noted came masked pilots who ran into the wide halls, all scrambling for the same place. He recognized this route and knew they were going to the docking bays.

Thuringwethil seemed to melt into perspective from nowhere, emerging from some narrow hallways in shining black armor.

“Boss,” Thuringwethil started. “You jumped us into warp, summoned the fighter pilots, and _not a single mention_ to me?” Her eyes traveled briefly over to Mairon with recognition and then back to her master. There was a sudden chill in the air.

“Two scout ships,” he supplied. “They’ve tailed our warp. I need a wraith fleet out there when I disengage.”

She quickened her pace to flank him, Mairon trailing vaguely behind. He didn’t know if he was to be following them, or if it was just force of habit.

“Will my engineers be installing the new AP rounds?” she asked.

“Not this time.” Mairon felt invisible. He also knew there was nothing he could contribute to the conversation; he was no engineer.

Then Melkor spoke up, almost on cue. “Mairon—would you accompany Thuringwethil to prepare my ship?”

He balked. “I’m—not an engineer,” he professed.

Thuringwethil cast him a knowing grin from over her shoulder, sharing with Melkor some secret he was not privy to. “You’ll figure it out,” she promised.

Melkor parted from them with little more than a nod, leaving him alone to follow Thuringwethil. He turned his head to look back to where Melkor seemed to be heading; but there was no one there, the hallway dim as doors slid shut behind them.

“So you’ve decided to stay!” She practically danced over to walk beside him. It was oddly youthful, though her eyes decried thousands of years of knowledge. Everyone who had seen the old world had that same look about them. “I heard that someone had gotten clearance to take that captured Federation ship out of the system. I assumed that was you. Glad to see it wasn’t.”

“I don’t know anything about your ships,” he supplied. He tried not to think about the fact that he was being asked to work on enemy ships, part of an enemy fleet, on the dark lord’s ship of all things.

Thuringwethil snorted. “You designed them, Mairon,” she said. “_Trust _me. You’ll figure it out.”

"I’ve never designed anything.” He frowned.

When they arrived at the docking bay, there was a general buzz of action. Rows of dark, unmarked ships were being boarded by masked and hooded figures, mechanics flitting about to make final preparations. The cacophony of shouting and machinery was only overridden by the softly pulsing red alarm lights high above them and the deep hum of engines firing up.

“I’ll disconnect the power lines,” Thuringwethil shouted over the melee as she led him to the far end of the bay. It was quieter here, as if people habitually avoided the area.

Parked up in the corner was a sleek black ship.

“Anything I need to do?” he tried. She rolled her eyes and handed him a tablet off of the belt at her hip.

“I just had the main batteries replaced,” she explained. “Gotta make sure they’re fully charged. When I detach, just make sure the numbers here don’t drop. It’s hooked up to the ship’s central computer.”

He made his way around the craft with her to a nondescript port where the power connections snaked out from the wall. The wire was heavy and sagged onto the shining floor.

He looked over the ship. It wasn’t shaped like any of the others he saw. It was sleek and flat, its bulk supporting only the dangerous-looking blasters mounted to the front. He didn’t see any windows, any doors—he mentally reviewed the Federation schematics he’d studied before in his head, tried to make sense of it.

“It’s unmanned,” he realized suddenly.

“No shit,” Thuringwethil grunted, pulling at a series of clips that secured the battery cable in place. The tablet displayed a series of numbers as he came close, corresponding to the power available to the ship. They weren’t in a standard unit system that he knew.

“Thought this was Morgoth’s ship.” She disconnected the cables. There was a slight jump in the power readings, and then it balanced itself out again as the ship came to life. Banded lights that shone like fire emerged across the sleek surface of the drone.

“He hates that name, you know,” she warned. “Wouldn’t say it around the wrong people if I were you. There are those who have died for lesser offenses.”

“Maiar don’t die,” he tried to reason. Though, he didn’t like the thought of being disembodied, stumbling and weak through a cold and lonely galaxy, no one there when he calls—

_Wouldn’t be anything new,_ some dark part of his mind decided.

She laughed coldly. “Keep telling yourself that,” she mocked. “How are the numbers?”

“Stable,” he answered. He didn’t realize until after that he could have lied. He could have told her something was wrong—or make it so that there was something wrong. But he told the truth—to the enemy.

“Thanks.” She pulled the tablet out of his hands, swiped around on it. He could see a series of readings come up and a collection of latches popped open automatically on the front.

She unbuckled a multimeter from her belt and handed it off to him. “Fucking blaster signal never responds right,” she mumbled. “I’ve already released the housing. Go check the terminals up there for me. Give me a call if there’s no signal—_watch those wings_.” He jumped out on the way right on time as a series of flaps extended on the wings, changing shape in swift and silent motions. It was truly a marvel of engineering, he thought, however they got those motors so quiet—the ship only hummed softly, even as the rear jets began to take on a white glow.

He made his way around the side to the front and tested the terminals. He didn’t know exactly how to read these enemy multimeters—didn’t know whether he should say either. But the general workings seemed the same as any that he’d worked with in the past.

“It’s, uh…working fine,” he said, loudly enough so that she could hear. She only asked for a signal—not the details. It’d have to do.

It seemed enough for her, because she grinned and patted the drone like it was a pet. “She’s ready to go!” she called up to somewhere beyond them—loudly. Her voice projected easily, laced with power. Had a Maia used magic for something that trivial on his home planet, they would have been in trouble. It was looked down upon to be so frivolous—but things were different here. Thuringwethil used her powers freely.

He didn’t know _how _anyone heard her but it appeared they did. He felt a lurch from the drone just in time to back swiftly away from it. It rose to life, the lights across the hull bleeding into dark blue, green, yellow—and Thuringwethil nodding and checking off of some list as the landing gear lifted into void-dark ports and it drifted toward the phasegate.

He’d never seen a fighter take off before, and the sight was something to behold. The _wraith_ ships that he’d heard mention of before were drifting into formation behind the drone, shouts of _cap’n’s ready to launch_ echoing from one mouth to another through the bay. Thuringwethil grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back to stand along the wall.

“Check this out,” she said into his ear over the now-cacophonous hum of engines charging up.

There was a blast of heat, and then they all took off in unison, cutting a wide _v_ across the stars.

To see a fleet launch in person was more incredible than any of the promotional holovids he filched off of the scrapyard ships. Within moments they were gone, leaving him in awe.

“They have a manned fleet follow a drone,” he realized after the bay began to clear out.

“Boss doesn’t leave _The Void_,” Thuringwethil said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She rolled her eyes, hands on her hips. “You’ve got a lot to learn if you plan to stick around. You’ve missed out on a few thousand years of action.” She watched him steadily, all her years creeping onto her face. “So tell me why you came back _now_, of all times. We could have used you back during the Blackout.”

Mairon frowned. “I woke up with Aulë like all of his other maiar,” he said.

Her eyes flashed. “But something didn’t feel right,” she finished for him. “You set out to the stars for something else—answers, dreams. All you really knew was that you had to get away.”

Mairon leered at her. “How do you know these things?” he prompted.

She didn’t answer.

-x-

He wasn’t sure how or why but his feet guided him back to Melkor. Every door in this place opened to him; he walked without purpose, and somehow found himself ending up here.

The room was dark. The hum of electronics around him and the indistinct flash of tiny LED lights was all that told him the size of the place—small, about as far across as he was tall, but long like a hallway. At the far end Melkor stared into an insistinct console mounted into a table. If he heads Mairon come in, he did not react. The shadows seemed to swallow up the glow of the screen, swirling and churning.

“You let the elves out,” he accused. “They called their friends.”

“Maedhros helped me out when I got here,” he answered. “I couldn’t just let him die in your cells.” The part of him with any common sense at all made sure to remind the rest of him who he was talking to. This was an easy way to get himself tortured, or maybe killed. Yet he wasn’t afraid. “He’d already gotten out anyway. You should be more careful about your Uruks.”

“You have to let go of your sentiments, Mairon.” Melkor spoke like a parent would. Authoritative, but there was no edge to it. The shadows relaxed their grip on the room. “I never knew you to have compassion.”

“Who was I, then?” he prompted. He was grappling for information, bargaining with himself about how long he could stay before he got what he wanted: an explanation that he could believe.

Melkor rose from the console. He didn’t turn around—but his back straightened to his full height, and Mairon found himself cast into the dark lord’s shadow. “You were quick and precise,” he described. “You valued order and logic. You thrived the most when you were in control. Every decision you made—you based it on _results_.”

He was speaking Mairon’s dreams, and that scared him. Wasn’t Morgoth known for seducing Ainur into his service in the past? He was sharp enough to fool Manwë and work his way into their good graces more than once. That was the story he knew.

_We would never be so cruel unless we had no choice,_ he remembered Aulë’s sad voice as he told the end of his story on every Founder’s Day. Why not celebrate the founding of the scrapyard they called a planet by repeating propaganda?

He didn’t know where that dark thought came from or why he resonated so much with it.

“You really remember nothing,” Melkor identified, defeated.

“Nothing.” A lie. He knew these flashes to be something—_something _related to his history. He didn’t want to process them yet. Frankly, he was trying not to think about the distinct possibility that he was very, very evil. No one _wanted _to be evil.

“Think about it, Mairon.” He wanted to pull his name right out from Melkor’s mouth. Every time he said it, it _hurt_. “Focus. You must be in there somewhere.”

He did. His brow creased, fists clenched.

All he felt when he tried to recall those flashes, visions of fire and gray hands—was anguish. Righteous indignation. _Pain, so much pain_. His hand tingled.

“I’m sorry,” he dismissed. It wasn’t worth looking into. It was easier to lie like that when Melkor was turned away, those piercing eyes not boring holes into him. He was less vulnerable that way.

“We’ll keep working on it,” Melkor declared. “I know of a place in the Vanyar system—“ A red signal light came on, bathing the room suddenly in ominous light. It was so much more cramped with the dark walls illuminated. Melkor swore, fiddling with a control panel over his monitor.

“Do you still have my comm?” He had a lot more strength in his voice with the indescribable urgency.

“I—yes.” He held up his wrist with the black comm still attached. Not that Melkor was looking.

“Have it take you to Eönwë,” he ordered. “Manwë’s fleet is here. Tell him the pursuit team needs backup.”

Mairon should have been excited. That was very much a chance off of this evil ship and back home. But was he a prisoner here? An accomplice?

No, he realized, he was doomed to go down with this ship. The moment he refused his chance to escape, he crossed a line. And for what…?

“_Now_, Mairon.” He jumped, backing into the sliding door and letting himself out. Even he knew not to try the patience of a god.

-x-

The comm led him back to the messy maintenance bay where the scout ship from before was. Now there was an empty space on the deck where it once sat, confirming the elves’ escape. A wave of relief washed over him—and trepidation. After all, he had just let two known enemies of these people flee. He couldn’t help but feel that their situation now was related.

The bay was empty now. If there had been any mechanics milling about before there weren’t now—but this was where the comm led him. He walked past several half-dismantled ships, some more damaged than others, stepping his way around tools and wires. The floor here was interlocked with wide orange stripes, differentiating it from the one before with Melkor’s ship. If they shone once, they were dulled with scratches and gouges from power tools, burn marks and odd stains. It reminded him somewhat of home, just without the red dust. The dust from outside always worked its way into Aulë’s halls, seeping into everything.

He spotted a single lone figure. Though his gray jumpsuit was covered in stains, his boots shone with a fairly expensive air. He was laying half under a ship, surrounded by an array of tools. This, he thought, must be Eönwë, if there was no one else here to speak to.

“…Um,” he started.

“In a _minute_.” He spoke with more force than necessary. He was annoyed, for whatever reason, as if Mairon’s presence was a stain. He could hear the curl in his lip even if he couldn’t see his face from under the ship. Mairon felt a wave of frustration—and crushed it down. He didn’t know this person, or what he may be to Melkor.

“I have a message from Mor—from Melkor,” he continued, feeling more confidence at the very name. _This is important, whatever it means_, he wanted to say. _You can’t treat me like a cockroach._

If this was to be his life now, he realized that he wasn’t opposed to getting some base level of respect that he hadn’t had before, even if it meant acknowledging whatever this Mairon from the past had done.

“Go on.” The click and motion of tools had stopped, though this Eönwë had yet to extricate himself from his project.

“He says Manwë’s fleet is here. The pursuit team needs backup.” Word for word, Mairon thought.

“Shit.” He reached out, sliding a detached panel door back under with him. “Fetch me some solder from the cart behind you so I can wrap this up.”

Mairon obliged, delighted to recognize all of the tools and trinkets on the floor and the rolling cart. Some things never changed, and the base composition of all of these electronics seemed universal on both sides of the Dark Space borders. The wrapped tube of metal wire was familiar in his hands. Low-temp solder was popular for work on panels that wouldn’t expect any heat exposure, good for delicate chips that could melt straight through with a higher standard temperature.

He heard a click and the high-pitched whine of a blaster warming up. He froze. When he looked back, Eönwë had extricated himself from the ship’s underbelly some ten feet away. The dirty jumpsuit he’d been working in hung half-removed around his hips, form-fitting armor in crisp black sitting underneath. And a holster with several gleaming, powerful blasters that made the one Mairon took before seem inadequate.

“Turn around and face me,” Eönwë ordered. “Hands where I can see them.”

Mairon obliged. There was little else he could do. Eönwë was clearly an important maia by his uniform and his crisp, clean haircut. He had a hawklike face that Mairon swore he recognized from—somewhere. But where? Had they too met before?

No, this was more distinct than the vague nostalgia he felt from Thuringwethil.

“Never thought I’d see you here, _snake_,” Eönwë growled. “Already wormed your way into Melkor’s good graces, did you? Did you sing sad little platitudes about how you missed your _dear master_? Grovel at his feet?” He glared with such hate and yet, all Mairon could think about was the fact that—he’d seen that face before. Staring down the barrel of a gun, he only wondered who its wielder was. Had they met before? He definitely wasn’t one of Aulë’s. He had a name Mairon felt like he ought to know, a face he’d seen somewhere before.

_Cast in bronze and copper. A heavy marble stand, a plaque retelling a story as old as the planet they stood on. He had a face like a hawk and sad, piercing eyes that only Aulë’s incredible craftsmanship could realize._ _Mairon stole away from the scrapyard to look upon it and wonder what it must be like to be among Aulë’s most senior maiar._

“You’re the herald of Manwë,” he realized with a horrible sinking feeling.

“So you’ve still got eyes.” The Herald of Manwe himself was looking at him like he was the worst possible thing that could have turned up today.

“You’re supposed to be dead.” Suddenly, every single story he’d been told about the last great war didn’t match up. Everything was supposed to culminate in the death of Manwë’s Herald. Eönwë was supposed to be the catalyst to it all. He had been erased from the world—there were memorials. Holidays. The entire memory of the great war revolved around the death of the Herald.

Eönwë, very much alive, rolled his eyes. “So you’ve come back as a moron,” he mocked. “Do you believe every single thing the Valar tell you? Or just the things that make no sense?”

“I—don’t understand.” Seems there were a lot of things he didn’t understand. Eönwë wasn’t gone. He was—a traitor?

“I don’t have time to tell the history of dark space to someone I hate.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Give me that comm bracelet. It doesn’t belong to you.” Shaking, Mairon loosened the wrist strap until it slid off, stepping tentatively forward until he could deposit it in Eönwë’s hand. He didn’t have many other options. While a blaster couldn’t necessarily kill him, it would hurt very, very bad, and he wasn’t the kind of maia who was strong enough to just recover from that.

Eönwë stepped around and took Mairon’s own weapon from him. Not that he’d have a chance to use it, he thought. Once he seemed confident Mairon was unarmed and essentially useless, he powered down his own blaster with one hand and slid it back into its holster.

“I’d really love to just shoot you now,” he said. “But Melkor would just spend the next decade putting you back together again. I’m not one to _postpone_ my problems.” He leered at Mairon, much too piercing and stripping him of what little confidence he’d gained during his limited time on _the Void_. “Since I know he won’t get rid of you—just stay out of my way. If you try to ruin everything, _I’ll_ ruin _you_. I know exactly how.” The sly smirk his mouth bent into only told Mairon that Eönwë knew something which he did not. Something important—but lost, just like everything else that Mairon found in this ship.

“I—” Eönwë was gone suddenly, disappearing just as he rounded a powerlift. There was a rustle from somewhere—like feathers, he thought. Then, an eerie silence as the maintenance bay sat vacant of all but him.

He slid to the ground, crouching there as he tried to absorb what was happening. The Herald of Manwë was alive, and he was working for Morgoth. The Valar lied about two things—the history of the galaxy, and his own role in it. They were the only people who had any memory of the worlds before the Blackout. And they _lied_.

Wouldn’t it be easy to lie, though, when they were the only ones that remembered…? If there was something to hide, wouldn’t it be convenient to just leave it out? Something that made them seem less than noble—flawed. How easy would it be to let the whole galaxy just forget about their mistakes?

Everyone except…the villains in dark space. They knew something and they weren’t talking about it.

_All you really knew was that you had to get away_, Thuringwethil had told him. Get away…from what? _What_ was he forgetting?

He sat there, alone in a maintenance bay of a notorious villain’s ship, and wished he had the answers.

There was someone who did, though, he realized. From the pocket on his chest he removed the Federation communicator he’d caken from the scout cruiser. Fumbling with shaking hands, he flipped it open and the backlit screen slowly came to life.

He dialed the only number from home that he could remember—Curumo’s extension. The connection wheel took some time to work out his call, and then on the screen the grainy image of his one friend from the scrapyard came into view.

“_Mairon_?” he tried with some disbelief.

“Curumo,” Mairon breathed with relief. His familiar face eased the shakes in his hands.

He looked worried even as the image occasionally faded in and out of view. “_Where are you?_” he asked. “_The Sulimo was—well._”

“It’s a really, _really_ long story.” Mairon could have laughed, but then he remembered what he really needed to do. “I need you to get me in touch with Aulë. It’s really important.”

Curumo looked worried, but without much effort he relented. “…_Alright_,” he agreed. “_You timed it just right. Aulë is here today for something_.”

Mairon’s face hardened. Of _course_ he was. It only reinforced the feelings Mairon was already having.

He was realizing now that he’d just stumbled into something much, much bigger than himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay. I've made the decision to remove and change some fairly major plot points which requires significant reworking of much of the first arc. A lot of the original story has to be rewritten. Updates will continue to have some delay while I build a backlog of postable chapters.
> 
> Additionally, when this story is complete, I may upload some of the other plot branches I chose to explore as a playable Twine website.
> 
> Edit: I am having trouble keeping the chapters in order. I apologize if this one appeared to you before another chapter. Additionally, I want to thank everyone who has left kind comments. I choose to keep comments hidden because I have anxiety and I worry that I will feel too demotivated to continue posting if the story is not well received, so I am trying not to read them until I finish posting each arc. I really do appreciate your kind comments and will set all of them to post after the end of the first arc.
> 
> Edit 2: Tonight I finally worked out the issue with the posting order. It appears that this chapter - the third chapter, but the fourth entry including the prologue - was mistakenly posted to overlap with the number of a previous chapter, because I was counting chapters and not entries. This means that the story may have displayed out of order, with identical chapters at the end. I finally realized what was going on tonight and fixed it. If you received an update notice tonight, I apologize. Once the ~12 chapters of the first part are posted, I will review the posting order one more time and make sure everything is fixed.
> 
> It also looks like I lost some of my edits because I decided to restore the story from an older backup. If there are any typos or other inconsistencies, I apologize. This also means any comments posted in the last week or so have been unintentionally removed. I apologize for this as well. I will try my best to prevent this problem in the future. Again, I am really sorry if this causes any confusion or narrative inconsistencies.


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